Charles Sheffield Quotes

“See, everybody looks at the world from his own point of view. I call it the ground state of the resting mind. And your brain does the same thing, left alone it returns to and thinks about what it’s really interested in.”

Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 19 (p. 251)

“Sometimes wealth and power merely created the desire for more of the same.”

Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 17 (p. 227)

“When you got right down to it, every important decision in life was made with inadequate information.”

Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 16 (p. 217)

“When in doubt, follow the money trail. People could lie, motives could be disguised, even acts could be misunderstood. Money was as constant as human nature.”

Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 14 (p. 190)

“If you wanted to get yourself killed, there was no better way than to think you knew all the tricks. It took experience to make you realize that the universe could always pull another one out of the bag and throw it at you.”

Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 11 (pp. 148-149)

Charles Sheffield Quotes about thinking

“Theories were a dime a dozen. The partition that separated science and wishful thinking was evidence: observations and firm facts.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 8, “Theories, Theories, Theories” (p. 84)

“But humans had to learn to ignore appearance. No two beings who shared common thinking processes and common goals should be truly alien to each other.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 317)

“And now I think about it, I never really wanted to live forever. I just want to live well.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 5, “Summertide Minus Thirty” (p. 61)

Charles Sheffield book Between the Strokes of Night

Source: Between the Strokes of Night (1985), Chapter 29 (p. 342)

Charles Sheffield Quotes about the trip

“As you will one day discover, a leader is not a leader because of the way that he or she behaves. He is a leader only because of the way that he is treated by others.”

“Trouble comes in a thousand different ways. Not usually anything you expect, either. That’s why it’s trouble.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 16, “And Then There Were None” (p. 187)

“Be an optimist! It’s the only way to live.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 13 (p. 381)

“That’s a whole lot of ifs you got there.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 151)

Charles Sheffield Quotes

“You crazy? You’ve got me confused with a guy who cares about other people.”

“True. But which would you prefer, Louis Nenda?” Atvar H’sial rose from her crouched position. “A substantial set of contingent possibilities, or a single unpleasant certainty?”
Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 32, “Escape Clause” (p. 385)

“When you had little or no information, it was unreasonable to have any expectations. But somehow you did, even if they were often wrong.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 30, “Stripping the Ship” (p. 368)

“Idle wishing for circumstances different from what you had was a waste of time.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 20, “Tally on Down” (p. 246)

“I do not like to concatenate implausibilities.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 20, “Tally on Down” (p. 245)

“When you have something to do, do it. When you have nothing to do, sleep.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 16, “And Then There Were None” (p. 188)

“Nothing in life produce a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 4, “Sleepless in Miranda Port” (p. 33)

“When a person was so consistently wrong, it was time to give up having opinions.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 26 (p. 516)

“One form of insanity bears the name curiosity.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 23 (p. 488)

“Science wasn’t a show-business talent, conducted in large halls and decided by audience applause.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 433)

“What I found was worse than diversity—it was insanity.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 321)

“But no one, no matter how intelligent, could make good inferences from bad data.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 17 (p. 188)

“If you win too easy, better ask what’s going on that you don’t know about.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 11 (p. 126)

“Old habits did not just die hard. They refused to die at all.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 11 (p. 125)

“Don’t confuse caution with cowardice.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 7, “The Torvil Anfract” (p. 70)

Charles Sheffield book Divergence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Divergence (1991), Chapter 22 (p. 495)

“Impossible gadgets are always the most valuable.”

Charles Sheffield book Divergence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Divergence (1991), Chapter 16 (p. 433)

“No purpose is served by making private suffering into a public event.”

“What does one do when a madman suggests an appealing course of action? One worries—but probably goes along with it.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 23 (p. 254)

“That’s what logic says. But I say, phooey, who wants logic? Not you, and not me. We want results.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 151)

“The partners were there; gravity was calling the changes, and the cosmic dance was ready to begin.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 13, “Summertide Minus Ten” (p. 150)

“Everyone was polite; no one was happy.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 11, “Summertide Minus Thirteen” (p. 127)

“Mathematics is universal. But very little else is.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 11, “Summertide Minus Thirteen” (p. 126)

“But mere plausibility did not make the statement true.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 10, “Summertide Minus Eighteen” (p. 119)

“A long time ago humans talked of terraforming Mars and Venus, but we never did it. Just too busy blowing ourselves up, I guess, ever to get round to it.”

Source: The Heritage Universe, Summertide (1990), Chapter 6, “Summertide Minus Twenty-Nine” (p. 65)

Charles Sheffield book Between the Strokes of Night

Source: Between the Strokes of Night (1985), Chapter 28 (p. 322)

“To a political mind, everything is politics.”

“You can learn more about a person by watching them eat one meal than by listening to them speak for a whole day.”

Source: Behrooz Wolf (aka The Proteus Trilogy), Proteus In The Underworld (1995), Chapter 3 (p. 23)