David Brin Quotes page 2

“He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 24 (p. 466)

“But it’s not so hard, learning to picture yourself as part of a great chain. One that began long before you, and will go on long after.”

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 81 (p. 364)

“It was a queer, disturbing instant of recognition. We all create monsters in our minds. The only important difference may be which of us let our monsters become real.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 21 (p. 387)

“Beware of assumptions that seem “obvious” in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.”

Part III (pp. 145-146)
Earth (1990)

“Life is the continuation of existence, yet no thing endures. We are all patterns, seeking to propagate. Patterns which bring other patterns into being, then vanish, as if we’ve never been.”

Afterword (p. 661)
Earth (1990)

“The man talked, but somehow nothing he said seemed to make any sense.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 16 (p. 281)

“What hope has any endeavor which is based on hate and fear?”

Part XI (p. 647)
Earth (1990)

“He managed to lie by implication while speaking words that were the literal truth, a skill he had grown good at, if not proud of.”

Introduction to Chapter 12 (p. 191)
Glory Season (1993)

“Intelligence is loose in the galaxy. Power is in our hands, for better or worse. We can modify Nature’s rules, if we dare, but we cannot ignore her lessons.”

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 5 (p. 200)

“Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.”

Introduction to Chapter 2 (p. 32)
Glory Season (1993)

David Brin

Orbit interview (2002)

“Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.”

“The lesson they took home with them was simple; it takes a full belly before a man or woman gives a tinker’s damn about anything as large as a planet.”

Part VII (p. 328)
Earth (1990)

“Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.”

Part IX (p. 493)
Earth (1990)

David Brin

"Interview de David Brin" at ActuSF.com (March 2008) http://www.actusf.com/spip/article-5739.html

“Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.”

David Brin book The Transparent Society

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

“There were times when Robert actually envied his ancestors, who had lived in dark ignorance, before the twenty-first century, and seemed to have spent most of their time making up weird, ornate explanations of the world to fill the yawning gap of their ignorance. Back then, one could believe in anything at all.
Simple, deliciously elegant explanations of human behavior—it apparently never mattered whether they were true or not, as long as they were incanted right. "Party lines" and wonderful conspiracy theories abounded. You could even believe in your own sainthood if you wanted. Nobody was there to show you, with clear experimental proof, that there was no easy answer, no magic bullet, no philosopher's stone. Only simple, boring sanity.
How narrow the Golden Age looked in retrospect.”

“It is dangerous these days for a male to write even glancingly on feminist themes. Did anyone attack Margaret Atwood’s right to extrapolate religio-machismo in The Handmaid’s Tale? Women writers appear vouchsafed insight into the souls of men—credit that seldom flows the other way. It is a sexist and offensive assumption, which does not advance understanding.”

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 53 (pp. 324-325)

“Apparently, the Fates were not so unsubtle as to deal him another blow just yet. He knew they didn’t operate that way. They always let you hope for a while longer, then strung it out before they really let you have it.”

Afterword (p. 561)
Glory Season (1993)

“The good side of the world media village was the sense it gave ten billion that each of them had at least some small connection with the whole. The bad side was that no one ever encountered anything, anymore, that was completely new.”

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 1, “The Cascades”, Chapter 8 (p. 68)

““I thought they were very good at what they did.”
”Of course they were good!” Brill glanced sharply. “The issue is what one chooses to be good at. The arts are fine, for hobbies. I play six instruments, myself. But they pose no great challenge to a mature mind.””

Part V (p. 245)
Earth (1990)

“Loneliness, her arch enemy, never seemed content.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 545)

“He tried again, but their sullen, rural obstinacy was impervious to logic.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 9 (p. 150)

“Is there an inverse relation between knowledge and wisdom? At times it seems the more we know, the less we understand.
I am not the first to note this quandary. One scholar recently wrote, “Lysos and her followers chase the siren call of pastoralism, like countless romantics before them, idealizing a past Golden Age that never was, pursuing a serenity possible only in the imagination.””

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 2, “Cyclops”, Chapter 4, “Harrisburg” (p. 126)

“What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.”

Introduction to Chapter 26 (p. 502)
Glory Season (1993)

“I’m learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.
At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.”

Part IV (p. 187)
Earth (1990)

“The heritage we give our children, and the myths we leave to sustain them, must work with the tug and press of life, or they will fail. Adaptability has to be enshrined alongside stability, or the ghost of Darwin will surely come back to haunt us, whispering in our ears the penalty of conceit.
We wish our descendants happiness. But over time one criterion alone will judge our efforts.
Survival.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 531)

“She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.”

Introduction to Chapter 12 (p. 192)
Glory Season (1993)

“It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics.
Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice.”

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 73 (p. 480)

“What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?”

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 9 (p. 225)

“After all,” he muttered, “what can they do to shake the confidence of a fellow who’s got delusions of adequacy?”

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 38 (p. 199)

“All right,” she said. “You’ve convinced me. Men are good for something, after all.”

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 83 (p. 537)

“One great mystery is why sexual reproduction became dominant for higher life-forms. Optimization theory says it should be otherwise.
Take a fish or lizard, ideally suited to her environment, with just the right internal chemistry, agility, camouflage—whatever it takes to be healthy, fecund, and successful in her world. Despite all this, she cannot pass on her perfect characteristics. After sex, her offspring will be jumbles, getting only half of their program from her and half their re-sorted genes somewhere else.
Sex inevitably ruins perfection. Parthenogenesis would seem to work better—at least theoretically. In simple, static environments, well-adapted lizards who produce duplicate daughters are known to have advantages over those using sex.
Yet, few complex animals are known to perform self-cloning. And those species exist in ancient, stable deserts, always in close company with a related sexual species.
Sex has flourished because environments are seldom static. Climate, competition, parasites—all make for shifting conditions. What was ideal in one generation may be fatal the next. With variability, your offspring get a fighting chance. Even in desperate times, one or more of them may have what it takes to meet new challenges and thrive.
Each style has its advantages, then. Cloning offers stability and preservation of excellence. Sex gives adaptability to changing times. In nature it is usually one or the other. Only lowly creatures such as aphids have the option of switching back and forth.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 23 (p. 429)

“Daisy had learned not to pay much heed to techno-fads. To her fell the task of preserving as much as possible, so that when humanity finally did fall, it wouldn’t take everything else to the grave with it.”

Introduction to Chapter 8 (pp. 123-124)
Glory Season (1993)

“Blatant idiocies had been tried by early men and women—foolishness that would never have been considered by species aware of the laws of nature. Desperate superstitions had bred during the savage centuries. Styles of government, intrigues, philosophies were tested with abandon. It was almost as if Orphan Earth had been a planetary laboratory, upon which a series of senseless and bizarre experiments were tried.”

Part VIII (p. 471)
Earth (1990)

“Anyone who tries to predict the future is inevitably a fool. Present company included. A prophet without a sense of humor is just stupid.”

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 23 (p. 141)

“Some smart moves were little more than nicely padded traps.”

Part III (p. 143)
Earth (1990)

“You can’t fight biology. Only push at the rules, here and there.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 1 (p. 19)

“The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 5 (p. 90)

David Brin

A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism : The Dangers of First Contact (September 2002) http://www.setileague.org/iaaseti/brin.pdf, p. 22

“At her station in life, wisdom dictated keeping a low profile.
And yet…”

“Naroin stopped, shook her head. “Take it from an experienced hand, child. It’s no good blamin’ yourself for what you couldn’t prevent. Not so long as you tried.”
Maia’s lips pressed together. That was exactly what she had been telling herself. From the look in Naroin’s eyes, it didn’t get much more believable as you got older.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 3 (p. 61)

“A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 26 (p. 514)

“What kind of man takes a live bomb across the seas in order to blow up other people? People who have mothers and lovers and children, just like him?
Probably either a professional or a patriot, Alex thought. Or, worse, both.”

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 72 (p. 474)

“All this talk of using tax policy to ‘assess social costs’…what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.”

Part IX (p. 524)
Earth (1990)

“It is senseless to proclaim that it’s evil to make generalizations about groups. Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true—in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. We have no right to pre-judge that a specific man can’t nurture, or a particular woman cannot fight.”

Part VII (p. 327)
Earth (1990)

“They say survival is Nature’s only form of flattery.”

Afterword (p. 562)
Glory Season (1993)

“She closed her eyes. And while her intellect wouldn’t let her realize her deepest fear, that all this might soon be gone forever, nevertheless she stood there for a time and worshipped the only way a person like her could worship—in silence and solitude, under the temple of the sky.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 26 (p. 512)

“There was that word quaint again. It seemed to refer patronizingly to anything simple or backward, from the viewpoint of a city-bred tourist.”

Part VI (p. 307)
Earth (1990)

“I’d rather be dead than so suspicious I can’t trust anybody.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 5 (p. 90)

““Huh,” Sepak thought, marveling how much one could learn by just sitting still and observing. It wasn’t a skill one learned in the frenetic pace of modern society.”

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 26 (p. 525)

““Where there is mind, there is always solution,” Keneenk taught. All problems contained the elements of their answer.”

Part IX (pp. 501-502)
Earth (1990)