Kim Stanley Robinson quotes - page 4

It was a world of acts, and words had no more influence on acts than the sound of a waterfall has on the flow of the stream. (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Friendship was just diplomacy by other means, after all. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
It was a mistake to speak one's mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never did. Best to strip all statements of real content, this was a basic law of diplomacy. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Most ignorance is by choice, you know, and so ignorance is very telling about what really matters to people. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Well, societies without a plan, that was history so far; but history so far had been a nightmare, a huge compendium of examples to be avoided. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
So life adapts to conditions. And at the same time, conditions are changed by life. That is one of the definitions of life: organism and environment change together in a reciprocal arrangement, as they are two manifestations of an ecology, two parts of a whole. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
The urge to excel and the urge to lead aren't the same. Sometimes I think they may be opposites. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
You can't get any movement larger than five people without including at least one flippin idiot. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Science was a social construct, but it was also and most importantly its own space, conforming to reality only; that was its beauty. Truth is beauty, as the poet had said, speaking of science. And it was; the poet had been right (they weren't always). View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Yes. God makes the world using mathematics, and he has given us minds that can see it. We can discover the laws He used! It is a most beautiful thing to witness and understand! It's prayer. It's more than prayer, it's a sacrament, a kind of communion. An apprehension-an epiphany-it's seeing God, while still in this body and in this world! How blessed we are, to be able to experience God like that! Who would not devote their time to understanding more, to seeing deeper in God's manner of thinking about these things? (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Easier to destroy the world than to change capitalism even one little bit. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
You can only kill disappointment with a new try. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
It is easy to live multiple lives! What is hard is to be a whole person. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
We all have secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes, our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
We should conceive of ourselves not as rulers of Earth, but as highly powerful, conscious stewards: The Earth is given to us in trust, and we can screw it up or make it work well and sustainably. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Life is insanely robust, though we can make species go extinct, and this is the bad thing. So I always make the point that you can't say, 'Is it too late?' That is the terrible question, because either answer promotes inaction. If it's too late, you don't need to act; if it's not too late, you don't need to act. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
You can never properly predict the future as it really turns out. So you are doing something a little different when you write science fiction. You are trying to take a different perspective on now. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
This vain presumption, of understanding everything, can have no other basis than never understanding anything. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys - it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not. (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you have to argue point by point. Especially since the minimalists want to keep the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson