Alastair Reynolds: Quotes about thinking

Alastair Reynolds is British novelist and astronomer. Explore interesting quotes on thinking.
Alastair Reynolds: 396 quotes2 likes

““Are you sharpness personified?”
Khouri poured herself a few final sips of coffee and then left the rest of it on the stove for when she got back. Coffee was her only vice, one acquired in her soldiering days on the Edge. The trick was to reach a knife-edge of alertness, but not be so buzzing that she could not point the weapon without shaking.
“I think I’ve reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level, if that’s what you mean.””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 2 (p. 27).

“But make no mistake. My counterpart is capable of a great deal of ruthlessness in pursuit of a just cause. He believes he has right on his side. And men who think they have right on their side are always the most dangerous sort.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 32 (p. 600)

“Nothing he said indicated that he was that angry. I mean, there’s a difference between angry and murderous. Isn’t there?
Less than you’d think.”

Alastair Reynolds book The Prefect

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 5 (p. 52)

“This gets better, it really does. The odd thing is, I actually think you might be telling the truth. If you were going to lie, you’d at least come up with something that made sense.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 21 (p. 367)

“We don’t aspire to genetic unity, no matter what your propagandists think. The pursuit of optima leads only to local minima. We honour our errors. We actively seek persistent disequilibrium.”

Alastair Reynolds

The Great Wall of Mars (p. 22)
Short fiction, Galactic North (2006)

““I’m just saying… we can’t trust them. We’ve never been able to trust them. That’s always been a cornerstone of our operational policy.”
“Then maybe it’s time we got a new cornerstone. They’re people, Lillian. They might be people who make us uncomfortable, people with very different values from ours, but when we’re facing local extinction at the hands of a genocidal machine intelligence, I don’t think the differences between us look massively significant, do you?””

Alastair Reynolds book The Prefect

Source: The Prefect (2007), Chapter 28 (p. 472)

“There’s a catch,” Skellsgard said.
“Another one? But of course there is. You know, I’m thinking I should start a collection.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 11 (p. 171)

“Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world is going to ruin. It’s their job. Maybe they’re right, Floyd replied.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 9 (p. 138)

“I’m fed up with everyone being lied to just because the administration thinks it’s in our best interests not to know all the facts.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 25 (p. 378)

“For whatever reason, I am now fully conscious. Perhaps all beta-levels are capable of this, or perhaps my sheer connectional complexity ensured that I exceeded some state of critical mass. I have no idea. All I know is that I think, and therefore I’m exceedingly angry.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 18 (p. 364).

““Tell me, scientist to scientist, do you honestly think it will work?”
“We won’t know until we try,” Naqi said. Any other answer would have been politically hazardous: too much optimism and the politicians would have started asking just why the expensive project was needed in the first place. Too much pessimism and they would ask exactly the same question.”

Alastair Reynolds book Diamond Dogs

Turquoise Days, Chapter 2 (pp. 240-241)
Short fiction, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)

“Personally,” Scorpio said, “I think it’s time to stop thinking chivalry and start thinking artillery.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 19 (p. 272)

“Tell me, scientist to scientist, do you honestly think it will work?”

Alastair Reynolds book Diamond Dogs

“We won’t know until we try,” Naqi said. Any other answer would have been politically hazardous: too much optimism and the politicians would have started asking just why the expensive project was needed in the first place. Too much pessimism and they would ask exactly the same question.

Turquoise Days, Chapter 2 (pp. 240-241)
Short fiction, Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days (2003)

“Do you think it means anything?”

Alastair Reynolds book Terminal World

“Probably not," Ricasso said, wiping his dust-smeared hands on his knees. “I’m all for looking for meaning in ancient texts. But now and then you have to just accept the fact that you’re dealing with so much religious gibberish.”

Chapter 22 (p. 413)
Terminal World (2010)

“And you do not think that this is possible?”

Alastair Reynolds book Terminal World

“I’ll believe in anything when I see evidence for it.”

Chapter 12 (p. 188)
Terminal World (2010)

“Nature shouldn’t be able to do this, Sunday thought. It shouldn’t be able to produce something that resembled the work of directed intelligence, something artful, when the only factors involved were unthinking physics and obscene, spendthrift quantities of time. Time to lay down the sediments, in deluge after deluge, entire epochs in the impossibly distant past when Mars had been both warm and wet, a world deluded into thinking it had a future. Time for cosmic happenstance to hurl a fist from the sky, punching down through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling the geological chapters like a bullet through a book. And then yesterday more time—countless millions of years—for wind and dust to work their callous handiwork, scouring and abrading, wearing the exposed layers back at subtly different rates depending on hardness and chemistry, util these deliberate-looking right-angled steps and contours began to assume grand and imperial solidity, rising from the depths like the stairways of the gods.
Awe-inspiring, yesterday. Sometimes it was entirely right and proper to be awed. And recognising the physics in these formations, the hand of time and matter and the nuclear forces underpinning all things, did not lessen that feeling. What was she, ultimately, but the end product of physics and matter? And what was her art but the product of physics and matter working on itself?”

Alastair Reynolds book Blue Remembered Earth

Source: Blue Remembered Earth (2012), Chapter 17 (pp. 292-293)