Learning The World

Quotes

1. It’s a big coincidence. It’s something we can’t explain. But as far as we know that’s all it is. And if it isn’t, we’ll only find out by discovering more facts, not speculating, no matter how logical that speculation might seem. The way to learn the world is to look at the world.

   p. 148

2. 

   Falling in love indicated that your genes were complementary to those of the loved one. It told you nothing about when your personalities and sexualities were compatible.

   p. 40

3. 

   I can’t really imagine war. I can imagine having to fight some swarm of zombie machines or snarling horde of posthuman fast-burn wreckage or whatever, but not two or more actual human societies actually fighting each other. I’m aware that people did that, before history, before the Moon, but it seems irrational. One side would have to believe they had something to gain from destroying or damaging the other, which just doesn’t make sense: it runs up against the law of association. And more to the point, each individual on any side would have to believe that they benefited from participating even if they died, which doesn’t make sense either. I suppose kin selection could make genes prevalent that made people vulnerable to that kind of illusion, but that only makes sense with animals that don’t have foresight. Even crows aren’t that stupid, at least not the ones that can talk. You have to get down to ants and such like before you see that kind of genetic mechanical mindlessness.

   p. 134

4. 

   Darvin listened to the hymn with a mixture of enjoyment of its beauty and disdain of its content.

   p. 273

5. 

   I’m sure they’ll come up with all kinds of rationalizations, if the human precedent is anything to go by.

   p. 284

6. 

   “We’re in danger of losing the ship generation.”

   “I’m aware of the problems,” she said. “‘You can’t tell the boys from the girls, they have no respect for their elders, their user interfaces are garish and unwieldy, everybody is writing a book, and their music is just noise.’ Found scratched on a potsherd in Sumer.”

   p. 248

7. 

   All life is a struggle for existence. Why should it cease to be a struggle if it spreads among the stars?

   p. 239

8. 

   The cover pirated the pictures on the Southern pamphlet and headlined a story whose title, “Invasion from Infinity!,” bore witness to a brash disdain of doing right as much as of blithe contempt for having been proved wrong.

   p. 264

9. 

   If you, dear reader, are looking a this across some great gulf of time and increase of knowledge, spare me your condescension. You too were young once, and ignorant once, and from a future standpoint—perhaps your own—you are young and ignorant still.

   p. 358

10. 

    “‘Naive’ is not a word I associate with the Southern Rule. Superstitious, perhaps, traditional, yes, maddeningly set in their way, certainly—but not naive.”

    “I meant you are naive. They must have a hidden motive.”

    “This is why I have no politics,” said Darvin. “I can’t think in those terms.”

    p. 237

11. 

    For us scientists, on the other wing, life is not quite so simple. Because we learn the unknown. Unlike, hah-hah, our esteemed friends the philosophers, who learn the unknowable.

    p. 51

12. 

    “Anyway...I find what you write interesting.”

    “That’s what people usually say when they disagree with it.”

    p. 110

13. 

    It had long been established in the Civil Worlds that public business was to be transparent, and personal business opaque; but it was as well recognised that the two would always have a turbulent interface, and that the clique, the caucus, and the conspiracy were as ineradicable features of civility as the council or the committee.

    p. 136

14. 

    Of all the sciences, astronomy was the one the superstitious liked least.

    p. 51

15. 

    She knew about these asteroids, of course. It was because she had classified them in the wrong mental category that she hadn’t thought of them.

    p. 249

16. 

    “I take small interest in politics,” he said. “The subject repels me.”

    p. 232

17. 

    It saddened him that military technology was so much more advanced than he’d ever imagined.

    p. 122

18. 

    When you’d lived long enough, she’d sometimes reflected, when certain habits had become ingrained no matter what refreshment of the neural pathways the immortality genes could bestow, ethics and etiquette became ever less distinct. Hitherto the involuntary equation had read one way, in disproportionate pangs of conscience over a small breach of manners. Now the terms had been inverted, and she felt over the Council majority’s horrible, criminal, potentially murderous mistake the sort of acute embarrassment that might have been appropriate for some ghastly faux pas. Dreadfully sorry, I’m such a ditz about these nuclear attack protocols...

    p. 326

That’s all the quotes.

18 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more