Poul Anderson quotes - page 5

Poul Anderson was an American science fiction and fantasy author, recognized for his imaginative world-building and prolific writing. Many of his works explored themes of space exploration, time travel, and cultural interaction. He influenced generations of writers and readers with his inventive storytelling. Here are 152 of his quotes:

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.' Yeah, trouble is, the three classes of people aren't the same.

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.

Poul Anderson

No amount of money would stave off a nuclear warhead.

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.

Poul Anderson

Well, everybody got stupid now and then, especially in war.

Poul Anderson

I seek occasional relief in old books. They help me tell the transient from the enduring.

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.

Poul Anderson

She seldom bothered taking revenge. Time did that for her, eventually.

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.

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.

Poul Anderson

He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy.

Poul Anderson

Nothing in excess, including self-denial.

Poul Anderson

What else is life but always bidding farewell?

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.

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.

Poul Anderson

Let's stop making wild guesses and start gathering data.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poul Anderson

It was true. Men died and civilization died, but before they died they lived. It was not altogether futile.

Poul Anderson