Gregory Benford

“I think,” Jordin said mildly, “a professional biologist would label that aggressive behavior.”

Naturals felt best in groups of a hundred or so, and better if only a few dozen were involved. Hunting parties had been about that size, for the long-extinct big game. Many important institutions were of the same rough scale: the ancient village, governing councils of nations, commanding elites of vast armies, teams playing games, orchestras, family fests. All human enterprises that worked were of that size, and nearly everything that failed was not.

None of the above. That’s often the right answer, and bugger the exams.

In his view, the true deep human fantasy was the conviction of safety. Men believed their women were devoted; wives felt that their men were dependable. Both ignored contrary evidence.

She had always admired the way bureaucracies spontaneously produced leaden prose, blandly sliding from the mouths of people who absolutely believed everything they said.

They all lived as ants in the shadow of mountains of millennia, and time’s sheer mass shaded every word.

Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

Nothing is eternal—including prisons.

Good food was like sex, one of life’s blessings, but they both lost their edge when talked about too much.

All the way up through the academic world she had spent a lot of energy fending off the blandly patronizing efforts to enter her in what she termed the Oppression Sweepstakes. Now that she had done something worth noting, blackness attached itself to her like a lamprey.

Indeed, high-blown rhetoric plus uncheckable consequences were the two sure signatures of the crank.

But these were mere passing irritants. Deeper were the systemic troubles. She stressed the many unknowns; the media wanted sharp answers to huge questions, preferably in a compact one-liner. She tried to emphasize the progressive questioning of her method and how all answers were provisional, awaiting confirmation; reporters liked zippy adventure and exciting guesses with, of course, striking visuals in primary colors.