Poul Anderson quotes - page 5

We Russians have learned to fear anarchy above all else. We would rather have tyranny than it. Hanno, you do wrong to look on people's republics, strong governments of every kind, as always evil. Freedom is perhaps better, but chaos is worse. (Poul Anderson)
Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.' Yeah, trouble is, the three classes of people aren't the same. View quote
Poul Anderson
It would annoy me less that we're heading into a new puritanical era if the puritanism concerned itself about things that matter. View quote
Poul Anderson
No amount of money would stave off a nuclear warhead. View quote
Poul Anderson
Once this was a free country. Oh, I always knew that couldn't last, that here too things were bound to grind back to the norm-masters and serfs, whatever names they go by. And so far we continue happier than most of the world ever was. But damn, modern democracy has the technology to regiment us beyond anything Caesar, Torquemada, Suleyman, or Louis XIV dared dream of. View quote
Poul Anderson
Well, everybody got stupid now and then, especially in war. View quote
Poul Anderson
I seek occasional relief in old books. They help me tell the transient from the enduring. View quote
Poul Anderson
Think. You have had your dealings with our bureaucracy. It is impossible not to, especially if one is a foreigner. Believe me, when we set our minds to it we can tangle, obstruct, and bring to a dead halt a herd of stampeding elephants. View quote
Poul Anderson
She seldom bothered taking revenge. Time did that for her, eventually. View quote
Poul Anderson
I also know you cannot pick and choose. Change is a medicine bundle. You must refuse it altogether, or take the whole thing. View quote
Poul Anderson
You shall depart freely. Caution enjoins me to have you arrested and garroted within this hour. Either you are a charlatan and deserve it or a mortal danger and require it. However, I deem you a sensible man who will withdraw to his obscurity. And I am grateful to you for a fascinating glimpse of-what is best left alone. (Poul Anderson)
I have learned much in two thousand years, but nothing about any gods, except that they too, arise, change, age, and die. Whatever there is beyond the universe, if anything, I doubt it concerns itself with us. View quote
Poul Anderson
He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy. View quote
Poul Anderson
Nothing in excess, including self-denial. View quote
Poul Anderson
What else is life but always bidding farewell? View quote
Poul Anderson
You can't be a telepath and remain any kind of prude. People's lives were their own business, if they didn't hurt anyone else too badly. View quote
Poul Anderson
Iskilip is senile, more than half converted to his own artificial creed. He was mumbling about prophecies Val Nira made long ago, true prophecies. Bah! Tricks of memory and wishfulness. View quote
Poul Anderson
Let's stop making wild guesses and start gathering data. View quote
Poul Anderson
Freedom brings responsibility and often guilt. It may indeed provide a deeper satisfaction and a richer life, but the evaluation of such rewards is a distressingly subjective process. Perhaps no argument in favor of liberty can satisfy the intellect; perhaps the best we can hope for is a shared emotional conviction. View quote
Poul Anderson
Anderson demonstrates that if one accepts a sham mystery as real, one has stopped or strayed in the search for truth, and truth has survival value. View quote
Poul Anderson
Mystery is in a way the guarantee of the boundlessness of the might of the ruler: power bound to reason must always have limitations, great though it may be. (Poul Anderson)
One can surrender one's rational will to beliefs or habits as easily as to individuals, for essentially the same reasons, and with essentially the same results. Ideas have a mystery and power of their own. View quote
Poul Anderson
One light-year is not much as galactic distances go. You could walk it in about 270 million years, beginning at the middle of the Permian Era, when dinosaurs belonged to the remote future, and continuing to the present day. View quote
Poul Anderson
No, the only way to sanity-to survival-is to abandon class prejudice and race hate altogether, and work as individuals. We're all...well, Earthlings, and subclassification is deadly. We all have to live together, and might as well make the best of it. View quote
Poul Anderson
It was true. Men died and civilization died, but before they died they lived. It was not altogether futile. View quote
Poul Anderson