# Quote — Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time

> “Do you actually hope to convert the whole of mankind?”
>
> “Belay that! Anyhow, if you mean, Do we hope to make everybody into copies of us? The answer is, No. Mind, I’m not in Parliament or Admiralty, but I follow debates and I read the philosophers. One trouble with the old machine culture was that, by its nature, it did force people to become more and more alike. Not only did this fail in the end—disastrously—but to the extent it succeeded, it was a worse disaster.” Lohannaso smote the rail with a mighty fist. “Damnation, Thomas! We need all the diversity, all the assorted ways of living and looking and thinking, we can get!”

- Author: [Poul Anderson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson.md)
- Book: [There Will Be Time](https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/there-will-be-time.md)
- Page: 119
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Poul_Anderson#There_Will_Be_Time_(1972)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/there-will-be-time/do-you-actually

## More from this book

> Above everything else, perhaps, was today’s concept of working together. I don’t mean its totalitarian version, for which Jack Havig had total loathing, or that “togetherness,” be it in a corporation or a commune, which he despised. I mean an enlightened pragmatism that rejects self-appointed aristocrats, does not believe received doctrine is necessarily true, stands ready to hear and weigh what anyone has to offer, and maintains well-developed channels to carry all ideas to the leadership and back again.

p. 155 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/there-will-be-time/above-everything-else.md)

> Look, these were none of them supermen. In fact, they were either weaklings who’d been assigned civilian-type jobs, or warriors as ignorant and superstitious as brutal. Aside from what specialized training fitted them for Wallis’s purposes, he’d never tried to get them properly educated. If nothing else, that might have led to questioning of his righteousness and infallibility.

p. 165 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/there-will-be-time/look-these-were.md)

> I walk beyond town, many of these nights, to stand under the high autumnal stars, look upward and wonder.

p. 176 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/poul-anderson/there-will-be-time/i-walk-beyond.md)