David Brin: Trending quotes

“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.”

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

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

Part V (p. 236)
Earth (1990)

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

Part VII (p. 353)
Earth (1990)

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

Part IX (p. 531)
Earth (1990)

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

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

“Survivalists. Gordon felt a wave of revulsion.”

Part V (p. 250)
Earth (1990)

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

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

“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.”

Part IV (p. 185)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

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

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)

“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.”

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

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

David Brin book Startide Rising

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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