# Quote — Iain M. Banks, The Algebraist

> The sheer wastefulness of it all distressed him. He was older and wiser now and more used to the way that things really worked being more important than the way they appeared to (unless you were talking about public perception, of course, when it was the other way around).

- Author: [Iain M. Banks](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks.md)
- Book: [The Algebraist](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist.md)
- Page: 277
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks#The_Algebraist_(2004)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/the-sheer-wastefulness

## More from this book

> Which was more likely: what appeared to be the case, or this all being a lie, a set-up, a vast and incomprehensible joke? Discuss.

p. 298 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/which-was-more.md)

> He was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel.

p. 316 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/he-was-one.md)

> Whether the Dweller List existed or not, everybody appeared to be acting as though it did, and that was all that mattered. It was a bit like money; all about trust, about faith. The value lay in what people believed, not in anything intrinsic.

p. 278 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/iain-m-banks/the-algebraist/whether-the-dweller.md)