Poul Anderson

Quotes

1. Pioneering is an unlimited chance to become the biggest frog, provided the puddle is small enough.

   p. 31

2. 

   “Your son was in your own tradition.”

   “Better, I hope,” said the old man. “There would be little sense to existence, did boys have no chance to be more than their fathers.”

   p. 150

3. 

   I’ll give you one thing to mull over, though. If the body’s such a valueless piece of pork, and we’ll all meet each other in the sweet bye and bye, and so on, why’re you busting every gut you own to get back to your wife?

   p. 87

4. 

   You can have more adventure in an hour’s walk through a forest than in a year on a spaceship.

   p. 103

5. 

   Men, whose span is cruelly short, rush nonetheless to death in their youth as to a maiden’s arms.

   p. 55

6. 

   ’Tis colder outside than a well-born maiden’s heart.

   p. 171

7. 

   For the ordinary man, instability—change—means dislocation, war, uncertainty, misery, and death.

   p. 198

8. 

   There are three Powers in the world which not gods nor demons nor men can stay, against which no magic shall prevail and no might shall stand, and they are the White Christ, Time, and Love.

   From the first you may await only thwarting of your desire, and you must be careful that He and His in no way enter the struggle. This you can do by remembering that Heaven leaves lesser beings their free will, and thus does not force them into its own ways; even the miracles have done no more than leave open a possibility to men.

   The second, which has more names than I myself—Fate, Destiny, Law, Wyrd, the Norns, Necessity, Brahm, and others beyond counting—is not to be appealed to, for it does not hear. Nor can you hope to understand how it exists together with the freedom whereof I spoke, any more than you can understand how there are both old gods and new. But for the wreaking of the greatest spells, you must ponder on this until you know in your inmost being that truth is a thing which bears as many shapes as there are minds which strive to see it.

   And the third of the Powers is a mortal thing, therefore it can harm as well as help, and this is the one you must use.

   p. 26

9. 

   You should pay no heed to what some yokel priest has prated of. What does he know?

   p. 70

10. 

    It isn’t possible to have equality. It’s been tried again and again in history, giving everybody a vote, and it’s always failed—always, in a few generations, the worse politicians drove out the better. Because by definition, half the people always have below-average intelligence; and the average is not high.

    p. 78

11. 

    Over unforced love, the gods themselves had no might.

    p. 76

12. 

    It sounds rather silly, doesn’t it? One little man thinking he can change history all by his lonesome. A lot of trouble has been caused by that delusion.

    p. 219