Frederik Pohl: Quotes about thinking

Frederik Pohl was American science fiction writer and editor. Explore interesting quotes on thinking.

Frederik Pohl: 72 quotes0 likes

“You don’t think progress goes in a straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating, maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell’s own time to get started, but when it goes it goes like a bomb.”

Day Million (p. 441)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

“Is there any of me, or of any of us, that isn’t just consequence?
I think, and I’ve thought it over a lot, that everything that ever happened keeps on happening, extending tendrils of itself endlessly into the moving present tense of time, porducing its echoes, and explosions and extinctions forever.”

I Remember a Winter (p. 139)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

“Think of a frog as a functional machine designed to produce baby frogs. This is the Darwinian view, and is really what evolution is all about. In order to succeed, the frog has to stay alive long enough to grow up and get pregnant or get some female frog pregnant. That means it has to do two things. It has to eat. And it has to avoid being eaten.”

Frederik Pohl book Man Plus

Source: Man Plus (1976), Chapter 5, “Monster Becoming Mortal Again” (p. 50)

“He said in an injured tone: “Mister, naturally the staff won’t bother your stuff. What kind of a hotel do you think this is?
“Of course, of course,” I said. But I knew he was lying, because I knew what kind of hotel it was. The staff was there only because being there gave them a chance to knock down more money than they could make any other way. What other kind of hotel was there?”

The Gold at the Starbow’s End (p. 381)
Platinum Pohl (2005)

“I don’t think you know what it’s like to have someone head over heels in love with you. What’s the good of a man who’s upside down?”

Frederik Pohl book Man Plus

Source: Man Plus (1976), Chapter 7, “Mortal Becoming Monster” (p. 81)