Sheri S. Tepper

Quotes

1. “By now, the Mahahmbi think we’ve always been around. They already believed they were God’s favorites when they came here, so it wasn’t hard to persuade them God created slaves for them.”

   Melanie snarled, “And if you believe you’re God’s favorite, killing a few women and children doesn’t bother you…”

   p. 366

2. 

   Whatever he thinks, it’s time you stopped enabling other people so you can enable yourself.

   p. 72

3. 

   She concluded: “Legalization would drive prices down, crime would stop, then we could take care of the addicts...”

   “And you do not do this because of...politics?”

   The Secretary of State said, “The war against drugs is big business. Thousands of people are on the payroll. The people on the payroll don’t want the problem solved, though they can’t say that out loud or, perhaps, even admit it to themselves. Instead, they continue to take a moral position that requires them to punish people. Punishing people is always considered moral.”

   p. 103

4. 

   It’s hard to talk like a human being when one hasn’t been treated like one for years!

   p. 106

5. 

   Don’t you find that predators are those who most often assert absolute rights to personal freedoms?

   p. 170

6. 

   No one ever has to believe! The universe is, it does not require belief. Do you think it will stop existing if you do not believe? Do you think far galaxies will harbor resentment against you if you do not believe? Do you resent the ant who does not look up and admire you? Never!

   p. 382

7. 

   As our sages have said, youth builds a universe with self at the center.

   p. 358

8. 

   “It could be any way at all by the will of Aitun,” snapped Chiddy. Aitun lets everything happen that can happen! It is up to intelligence to select!”

   p. 434

9. 

   We always assume that living, breathing, sensible creatures want peace.

   p. 217

10. 

    The world had been repeatedly swept by war and famine and plague when the population had been a quarter of what it was now! Less than a hundred years ago. Sparse population didn’t equal peace. It never had. All it meant were fewer casualties.

    p. 322

11. 

    “Thirty thousand some odd kids starve every day.”

    ”That’s not something we accept!”

    “Oh, hell, Senator. Don’t feed me the party line. When was the last time any of your colleagues voted for overseas family planning programs? You guys claim it’s to prevent abortion, but you know it’s not. You know damn well cutting family planning causes more abortions than it prevents, but you still do it. Why? Because most of the pro-life people are anti-contraception, too. And anti-sex education. And anti-gay. And anti-women’s-rights. But they’re pro-gun, pro-hunting, pro-military. Killing’s part of their lives.

    p. 226

12. 

    My grandfather said people who can learn, learn morality the way they learn everything else, by building on history. He also said that some people cannot learn from history, so they cannot change. For them, there’s only one book or tradition or whatever it’s called in their religion, and in that book God is eternal and whatever the book says God commanded two or three or four thousand years ago, God still commands today. That may be kill homosexuals or kill nonbelievers. It may say enslave your enemies. It may say mutilate or sequester women, or sell your ten-year-old daughter for somebody’s third wife.

    p. 391