# Quote — Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

> Their thinking clashed radically with Western thought; for instance the separation of church and state was wrong to them, making it impossible for them to agree with Westerners on the very basis of government. And they were so patriarchal that some of their women were said to be illiterate—illiterates, on Mars! That was a sign. And indeed these men had the dangerous look that Frank associated with machismo, the look of men who oppressed their women so cruelly that naturally the women struck back where they could, terrorizing sons who then terrorized wives who terrorized sons and so on and so on, in an endless death spiral of twisted love and sex hatred. So that in that sense they were all madmen.

- Author: [Kim Stanley Robinson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson.md)
- Book: [Red Mars](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/red-mars.md)
- Page: 9
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson#Red_Mars_(1992)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/red-mars/their-thinking-clashed

## More from this book

> In games there are rules, but in life the rules keep changing.

p. 431 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/red-mars/in-games-there.md)

> The weakness of businessmen was their belief that money was the point of the game; they worked 14-hour days in order to earn enough of it to buy cars with leather interiors, they thought it was a sensible recreation to play around with it in casinos—idiots, in short. But useful idiots.

p. 395 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/red-mars/the-weakness-of-businessmen.md)

> “Being on Mars will change us in an evolutionary way.”
>
> Arkady shook his head vehemently, causing him to spin a little in the air over the table. “No, no, no, no! History is not evolution! It is a false analogy! Evolution is a matter of environment and chance, acting over millions of years. But history is a matter of environment and choice, acting within lifetimes, and sometimes within years, or months, or days! History is Lamarckian! So that if we choose to establish certain institutions on Mars, there they will be! And if we choose others, there they will be!”

p. 88 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/red-mars/being-on-mars.md)