David Brin Quotes (123 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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David Brin

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Famous David Brin Quotes

“It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 14 (p. 267)
Variant: It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
As quoted in Values of the Wise: Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 120
This is very similar to the expression by Frank Herbert in Chapterhouse: Dune (1985): "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
Context: It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.

“In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.”

David Brin book The Transparent Society

Source: The Transparent Society (1998), Ch. 1

“On this occasion, despite the wind and sparkling stars, they looked just like huge chunks of stone, pathetically chiseled by desperate folk to resemble stern gods. People did bizarre things when they were afraid…as most men and women had been for nearly all the time since the species evolved.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VIII (p. 480)
Earth (1990)

“Prison for the crime of puberty—that was how secondary school had seemed, when he really thought back on it.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VIII (p. 462)
Source: Earth (1990)

“Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.”

David Brin Brightness Reef

Source: Brightness Reef

“When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.”

David Brin

David Brin Quotes about the world

““Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago… for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?”
The steely gray eyes were narrow and sad when next he looked up at Gordon. “I found out something, you know. I discovered that the big things don’t love you back. They take and take, and never give in return. They’ll drain your blood, your soul, if you let them, and never let go.
“I lost my wife, my son, while away battling for big things. They needed me, but I had to go off trying to save the world.” Powhatan snorted at the last phrase. “Today I fight for my people, for my farm—for smaller things—things I can hold.””

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 9 (p. 229; see also p. 305)

“It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures—its species—and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron.”

David Brin book Earth

Part XI (pp. 634-635)
Earth (1990)

“They saw the end coming, he thought, looking down the file of awful figures. But they were dead wrong about the reasons why. They assumed only gods had the power to wreak such havoc on their world, but people caused the devastation here.
Alex felt compassion for the ancient Pasquans—but a superior sort nevertheless. In blaming gods, they had conveniently diverted censure from the real culprit. The designer of weapons. The feller of trees. The destroyer. Man himself.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VII (p. 366)
Earth (1990)

“Piss on the world, or it’ll piss on you.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 9 (p. 155)

“Of course, sometimes a species’ invention only benefited itself. Goats developed an ability to eat almost anything, right down to the roots. Goats proliferated. Deserts spread behind them.
Then another creature appeared, one whose originality was unprecedented. Its numbers grew. And in its wake some other types did flourish. The common cat and dog. The rat. Starlings and pigeons. And the cockroach. Meanwhile, opportunity grew sparse for those less able to share the vast new riches—huge expanses of plowed fields and mowed lawns, streets and parking lots…
The coming of the grasses had left its mark indelibly on the history of the world.
So would the Age of Asphalt and Concrete.”

David Brin book Earth

Part II (p. 122)
Earth (1990)

“This is a lovely world,” he sighed. “And yet it has suffered horror. Sometimes, so-called civilization seems bent on destroying those very things which it is sworn to protect.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 93 (p. 590)

David Brin: Trending quotes

“The advance of human knowledge has become — at long last — a vividly enjoyable spectator sport! And a growing movement toward amateur science shows there is room for participants at every level.”

David Brin

Orbit interview (2002)
Context: I maintain contacts with researchers in dozens of fields, both for fun and to keep up. In fact, any well-read citizen can stay reasonably current nowadays, by reading any of the popular science magazines that describe remarkable advances every week, in terms non-specialists can understand. The advance of human knowledge has become — at long last — a vividly enjoyable spectator sport! And a growing movement toward amateur science shows there is room for participants at every level.

Knowledge , Sport , Science

“That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim — to negotiate better solutions for the republic.”

David Brin

A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war... (2009)
Context: I've long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation — even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right. At least, some of them had the beneficial knack of targeting and criticizing the worst liberal mistakes, and often forcing needful re-drafting.
That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim — to negotiate better solutions for the republic.
Alas, today's Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn't just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun-up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine. Heck, even though "culture war" is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn't what boggles most.
It's the stupidity. The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism, a transformation of nearly all of the salient traits of Barry Goldwater from:

Way

“An ancient and immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a majestic Creator. Our brains, capable of exploring His universe, picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much greater tasks than cowering in a small groups of the elect, praying that some of our neighbors will go to perdition…”

David Brin

Commenting on the discovery of Homo floresiensis, in a posting at McMedia.com (27 October 2004) http://www.mail-archive.com/brin-l@mccmedia.com/msg38195.html; an unsourced paraphrase replaces "go to perdition" with "go to hell".
Context: One more piece for the Great Jigsaw puzzle.
I find it truly stunning how many people can shrug off stuff like this, preferring instead a tiny, cramped cosmos just 6,000 years old, scheduled to end any-time-now in a scripted stage show of unfathomable violence and cruelty.
An ancient and immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a majestic Creator. Our brains, capable of exploring His universe, picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much greater tasks than cowering in a small groups of the elect, praying that some of our neighbors will go to perdition...

Universe

David Brin Quotes

“Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society.”

David Brin

Orbit interview (2002)
Context: Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this... say so!

Age

“One more piece for the Great Jigsaw puzzle.”

David Brin

“I've long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation — even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right.”

David Brin

Change

“A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original”

David Brin Brightness Reef

Source: Brightness Reef (1995), Ch. 25
Context: It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

“This is not about classic left-vs-right anymore. (As if that metaphor ever held cogent meaning.)”

David Brin

A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war... (2009)
Context: This is not about classic left-vs-right anymore. (As if that metaphor ever held cogent meaning.) Not when every measure of national health that conservatives ought to care about — from budget balancing to small business startups, to military readiness, to States' Rights, to the economy, to individual liberty, to control over immigration at our borders — does vastly and demonstrably better under democrats. With nearly 100% perfection.
(Fact avoidance is even worse when you encompass ALL of history. Ask today's conservatives which force destroyed more freedom and nearly every competitive market, across 5,000 years. Which foe of liberty and enterprise did Adam Smith despise? Hint: it wasn't "socialism" or "government bureaucrats.")
No. Given their lack of any other tangible accomplishments across the last fifteen years, one must to conclude that the core agenda of Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch and their petroprince backers really is quite simple.
To find out just how far they can push "culture war" toward a repeat of 1861.

“It is the one uniform trait shown by every* vicious, obstinate and troglodytic enemy of the American Experiment.”

David Brin

A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war... (2009)
Context: Step back for a minute and note an important piece of psychohistory — that every generation of Americans faced adversaries who called us "decadent cowards and pleasure-seeking sybarites (wimps), devoid of any of the virtues of manhood."
Elsewhere, I mark out this pattern, showing how every hostile nation, leader or meme had to invest in this story, for a simple reason. Because Americans were clearly happier, richer, smarter, more successful and far more free than anyone else. Hence, either those darned Yanks must know a better way of living (unthinkable!)... or else they must have traded something for all those surface satisfactions.
Something precious. Like their cojones. Or their souls. A devil's bargain. And hence — (our adversaries told themselves) — those pathetic American will fold up, like pansies, as soon as you give them a good push.
It is the one uniform trait shown by every* vicious, obstinate and troglodytic enemy of the American Experiment. A wish fantasy that convinced Hitler and Stalin and the others that urbanized, comfortable New Yorkers and Californians and all the rest cannot possibly have any guts, not like real men. A delusion shared by the King George, the plantation-owners, the Nazis, Soviets and so on, down to Saddam and Osama bin Laden. A delusion that our ancestors disproved time and again, decisively — though not without a lot of pain.

“We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?”

David Brin

Orbit interview (2002)
Context: We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it? Most fictional portrayals of life-extension simply tack more years on the end, in series. But that's a rather silly version. The future doesn't need a bunch of conservative old baby-boomers, hoarding money and getting in the grand-kids' way. What we really need is more life in parallel — some way to do all the things we want done. Picture splitting into three or four "selves" each morning, then reconverging into the same continuous person at the end of the day. What a wish fulfilment, to head off in several directions at once!

Time

“Life is not fair…Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 111 (p. 634)

Life , Fools

“I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds.”

David Brin

Orbit interview (2002)
Context: I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

“There was one exception to the rule that all our foes have committed the Decadence Assumption.”

David Brin

A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war... (2009)
Context: There was one exception to the rule that all our foes have committed the Decadence Assumption. Ho Chi Minh never underestimated America. His avowed hero was George Washington and he remained in awe of the U. S., all his life. He remains the only enemy leader who ever defeated us at war, and then only because our hubris (not decadence) got the better of us.

“Step back for a minute and note an important piece of psychohistory — that every generation of Americans faced adversaries who called us "decadent cowards and pleasure-seeking sybarites (wimps), devoid of any of the virtues of manhood."”

David Brin

Pleasure

“Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War

“It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 236)
Earth (1990)

School , Problem , Sense , Appearance

“Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as “enlightenment.””

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 20 (p. 364)
Glory Season (1993)

“All legends must be based on lies, Gordon realized. We exaggerate, and even come to believe the tales, after a while.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 18 (p. 298)

“There’s no urgency, a third voice urged, pleading compromise. No duty calls. Hold onto the illusion a little longer.
So she tried to go on pretending. After all, can’t believing sometimes make dreams come true?
No, it can’t. Besides, you're awake now.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VII (p. 353)
Earth (1990)

Dreams

“Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain reaction.”

David Brin book Earth

Part IX (p. 531)
Earth (1990)

Knowledge , Freedom

“A dragon’s inertia is not shifted by yanking its tail.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 551)

“From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 250)
Earth (1990)

Boy

“Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 2, “Cyclops”, Chapter 3, “Eugene” (p. 114)

““You think I'm kidding?” the pilot asked.
“No, we think you're crazy.””

David Brin book Earth

Part IV (p. 185)
Earth (1990)

Thinking

“Had I been wrong, this would still have been the honorable thing to do.
I am very glad, however, to find out that I was right.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 110 (p. 626)

“It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 10 (p. 66)

Men , Stupidity , Suffering

“Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 14 (p. 266)

Way

“It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.”

David Brin book Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 51 (p. 269)

Imagination

“Maia recognized a look of true religion in the other woman’s eyes. A version and interpretation that conveniently justified what had already been decided.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 14 (p. 240)

Religion

“The notions she fought with needed more than the simple algebra she’d been grudgingly taught at Lamai Hold. More and more she resented how they had robbed her of this, arguably her one talent, driving her from math and other abstractions by the simple expedient of making them seem boring.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 19 (p. 337)

“Anyone who loves nature, as I do, cries out at the havoc being spread by humans, all over the globe. The pressures of city life can be appalling, as are the moral ambiguities that plague us, both at home and via yammering media. The temptation to seek uncomplicated certainty sends some rushing off to ashrams and crystal therapy, while many dive into the shelter of fundamentalism, and other folk yearn for better, “simpler” times. Certain popular writers urgently prescribe returning to ancient, nobler ways.
Ancient, nobler ways. It is a lovely image... and pretty much a lie. John Perlin, in his book A Forest Journey, tells how each prior culture, from tribal to pastoral to urban, wreaked calamities upon its own people and environment. I have been to Easter Island and seen the desert its native peoples wrought there. The greater harm we do today is due to our vast power and numbers, not something intrinsically vile about modern humankind.
Technology produces more food and comfort and lets fewer babies die. “Returning to older ways” would restore some balance all right, but entail a holocaust of untold proportion, followed by resumption of a kind of grinding misery never experienced by those who now wistfully toss off medieval fantasies and neolithic romances. A way of life that was nasty, brutish, and nearly always catastrophic for women.
That is not to say the pastoral image doesn’t offer hope. By extolling nature and a lifestyle closer to the Earth, some writers may be helping to create the very sort of wisdom they imagine to have existed in the past. Someday, truly idyllic pastoral cultures may be deliberately designed with the goal of providing placid and just happiness for all, while retaining enough technology to keep existence decent.
But to get there the path lies forward, not by diving into a dark, dank, miserable past. There is but one path to the gracious, ecologically sound, serene pastoralism sought by so many. That route passes, ironically, through successful consummation of this, our first and last chance, our scientific age.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Afterword (p. 563)
Glory Season (1993)

Love , Life , Wisdom , Women

“He was, after all, a diplomat, and understood that the best and firmest deals are based on open self-interest.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 82 (p. 525)

“The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 10 (p. 66)

Girl

“Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach.”

David Brin book Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 49 (p. 261)

“Petals floating by, Drift through my woman’s hand, As she remembers me.”

David Brin book Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 103 (p. 418)

“Nation states are archaic leftovers from when each man feared the tribe over the hill, an attitude we can’t afford anymore.”

David Brin book Earth

Part X (p. 539)
Earth (1990)

Fear

“A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 35 (p. 221)

Behavior

“One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks…who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VI (p. 311)
Earth (1990)

Life , Reality , Joy

“I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.”

David Brin

Interview http://www.locusmag.com/1997/Issues/03/Brin.html in Locus (March 1997)

Hate , People , Intelligence , Science

“Maia lifted her gaze to watch low clouds briefly occult a brightly speckled, placid sea, its green shoals aflicker with silver schools of fish and the flapping shadows of hovering swoop-birds. The variegated colors were lush, voluptuous. Mixing with scents carried by the moist, heavy wind, they made a stew for the senses, spiced with fecund exudates of life.
The beauty was heavy-handed, adamantly consoling. She got the point—that life goes on.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 80)

Life , School , Beauty , Color

“We are programmed to find sex pleasurable for one simple reason—because animals who mate have offspring. Those who do not mate have none. Traits that result in successful reproduction get reinforced and passed on. Evolution is that simple.
It is therefore useless to bemoan as evil the fact that men tend toward aggression. Among our ancestors, aggression often helped males have more offspring than their competitors. “Good” and “evil” had little to do with it.
That is, until we reached consciousness, at which point, good and evil became pertinent indeed! Behaviors which might be excusable in dumb beasts can seem perverted, criminal, when performed by thinking beings. Just because a trait is “natural” does not oblige us to keep it.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 7 (pp. 105-106)
Glory Season (1993)

Men , Pleasure , Sex , Behavior

“As in elections, the law pretended universal rights, while securing the interests of powerful houses.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 553)

Law , Universe , Housing

“In the end, both extremes had more in common with each other than either did with the middle.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 24 (p. 470)

“It could be worse. I can’t think how right now, but I’m sure it could be worse.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 74)

Thinking

“You don’t have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!”

David Brin book Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 46 (p. 238)

“History and geology show what an eyeblink it’s been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.”

David Brin book Earth

Afterword (p. 656)
Earth (1990)

History

“A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.”

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 40)
Earth (1990)

Courage

“They accepted warriors…” he emphasized, “…That divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 18 (p. 298)

Problem , Madness

“Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next. Take our modern attitude toward war. Most anthropologists now think this activity was based originally on theft and rape—perhaps rewarding enterprises for some caveman or Viking, but no longer either sexy or profitable in the context of nuclear holocaust! Today, we look back on large-scale warfare as an essentially silly enterprise.”

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 48)
Earth (1990)

War , Fashion , Thinking

“We can’t save the world without food. Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.”

David Brin book Earth

Part II (p. 72)
Earth (1990)

People , World , Food

“He wasn’t afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.”

David Brin book Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 51 (p. 269)

Death

“Wisdom. No match for the troublemaker Curiosity.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 16 (p. 265)

Wisdom

“We are having extreme difficulty with local gangs of “Survivalists.” Fortunately, these infestations of egotists are mostly too paranoid to band together. They’re as much trouble to each other as to us, I suppose. Still, they are becoming a real problem.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 1, “The Cascades”, Chapter 5 (p. 43)

Problem

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