Gregory Benford Quotes

“Trouble comes looking for you if you’re a fool.”

Part 6 “Aleph Null”, Chapter 4 (p. 226)
Against Infinity (1983)

“Soldiers for equality, uh? Glad you warned me. I’d have thought you were just thieves.”

To the Storming Gulf, p. 126 (Originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1985)
In Alien Flesh (1986)

““You know, my dear, you’re wrong that suffering ennobles people.” She’d stopped to massage her hip, wincing. “It simply makes one cross.””

Part 4 “Hiruko: Six Years Later”, Chapter 1 (p. 148)
Against Infinity (1983)

“That thing doesn’t care about you. It won’t reward you when you take risks. It is simply indifferent. That’s the fact about it that most never learn. They hate it and fear it and finally ignore it. Because of that. It would be easier if it hated us. Maybe even if it hunted us. But it doesn’t care. Remember.”

Nooncoming, p. 100 (Originally published in Universe 8, edited by Terry Carr), 1978
In Alien Flesh (1986)

““One of the laws of nature,” Gordon said, “is that half the people have got to be below average.”
”For a Gaussian distribution, yeah,” Cooper said. “Sad, though.””

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 2 (p. 51)
Against Infinity (1983)

“That was what drew him to mathematics. Not because it was rarefied, but because it probed to the subtle, deeper reality. People said that mathematicians were unworldly, and yammered on about how Einstein couldn’t make correct change. Nonsense. Einstein just didn’t give a damn. It was the subtle, the beautiful that concerned him.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 17 (p. 234)

Gregory Benford Quotes about people

“You got to learn to wait people out. Hear what they got to say. Not enough to have a majority rule, y’know. Otherwise, the minority won’t be convinced and they won’t support the plan. No point havin’ people at your elbow who’re against what you’re doin’. So we just got to talk it out Quaker-style till ever’body agrees. More efficient in the long run.”

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 76)
Artifact (1985)

“As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out in his first novel, Player Piano, some people love problem-solving and tinkering—and that is the final, irreducible driver of human history. Wars and faiths and leaders come and go, but the problem-solvers’ slow, steady work is the fulcrum upon which history turns.”

Part 5 “Coming Home”, Chapter 3 (p. 179)
Against Infinity (1983)

“He went to Los Angeles to do the work even though he hated the city; it was full of happy homogeneous people without structure or direction. While on the bus to work, it seemed to him Los Angeles went on long after it had already made its point.”

Afterword to Nooncoming, p. 104
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“You know, my dear, you’re wrong that suffering ennobles people.”

White Creatures, p. 170 (Originally published in New Dimensions 5, edited by Robert Silverberg), 1975
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“She could not understand why people feared new ideas. She was frightened by the old ones.”

She’d stopped to massage her hip, wincing. “It simply makes one cross.”
Nooncoming, p. 100 (Originally published in Universe 8, edited by Terry Carr), 1978
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“It was getting the results that made science worth doing; the accolades were a thin, secondary pleasure.”

Source: Short fiction, Vortex, p. 111

Gregory Benford Quotes about science

“I would have to look, try to find a bridge that would make plausible what I knew but could scarcely prove. The standards of science are austere, unforgiving—and who would have it differently? I would have to hedge, to take one step back for each two forward, to compare and suggest and contrast, always sticking close to the data. And despite what I thought I knew now, the data would have to lead, they would have to show the way.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 39 (p. 411)

“Science is like literature, a continuing dialog among diverse and conflicting voices, no one ever wholly right or wholly wrong, but a steady conversation forever provisional and personal and living.”

Exposures, p. 244
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“A science fiction writer is—or should be—constrained by what is, or logically might be. That can mean simple fidelity to facts (which, in science, are always more important than theories—though Lord knows the two help shape each other, undermining the convenient, complacent separation of observer and observed). To me it also means heeding the authentic, the actual and concrete. Bad fiction uses the glossy generality; good writing needs the smattering of detail, the unrelenting busy mystery of the real.”

Afterword (p. 498)
Timescape (1980)

“Science is about continuity of ideas, a web of connections.”

Afterword to Exposures, p. 246
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“Puzzled frowns in the audience. Science reporters they might be, but high school chemistry was going a bit too deep for most.”

“A Scientist’s Notebook: Life on Mars?” in Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1997, p. 119

Gregory Benford book The Sunborn

Part II, Chapter 4, “Disbelief” (p. 104)
The Sunborn (2005)

Gregory Benford: Trending quotes

“Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.”

“Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 31 (p. 360)
Context: You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life’s pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with — no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.

“Organic forms are in the universe of things and also reside in the universe of essences. There we cannot go.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 14 (p. 182, known as Benford's law of controversy)
Context: It was an example of what he thought of as the Law of Controversy: Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

Gregory Benford book In the Ocean of Night

The Snark, p. 195
In the Ocean of Night (1977)
Context: Organic forms are in the universe of things and also reside in the universe of essences. There we cannot go. … You are a spontaneous product of the universe of things. We are not. This seems to give you … windows. It was difficult for me to monitor your domestic transmissions, they fill up with branches, spontaneous paths, nuances…

Gregory Benford Quotes

“Talkers never acted when they could talk.”

“In its studies and learned colloquy, Faz saw and felt the tales of Men. They seemed curiously convoluted, revolving about Self. What mattered most to those who loved tales was how they concluded. Yet all Men knew how each ended. Their little dreams were rounded with a sleep.
So the point of a tale was not how it ended, but what it meant. The great inspiring epic rage of Man was to find that lesson, buried in a grave.”

Redeemer, p. 53 (Originally published in Analog, April 1979)
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“Manuel stared at the place where Piet had been. The man he had known so little would now lie in this place far beyond the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome and the hammer of Marx, in a territory open and without plan, beyond man and his encasing theories, his filters, beyond the closed rooms of the civilized mind.”

Time’s Rub, pp. 260-261
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“(Crank theories) always violated the first rule of a scientific model: they were uncheckable.”

Part 6 “Aleph Null”, Chapter 3 (p. 221)
Against Infinity (1983)

“The role of boredom in human history is underrated.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 17 (p. 235)

“No matter how much you plan for it, the real thing seems curiously, well, unreal.”

Doing Lennon, p. 266 (Originally published in Analog, April 1975)
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“Every age is known by its pleasures, Fielding reads from the library readout. The twentieth introduced two: high speed and hallucinogenic drugs. Both proved dangerous in the long run, which made them even more interesting.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 37 (p. 395)

“Disintegration of structure equals information loss.”

Doing Lennon, p. 268
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Gregory Benford book In the Ocean of Night

The Snark, a member of a machine-intelligence civilization, p. 195
In the Ocean of Night (1977)

“To shine is better than to reflect.”

“All right, he thought, so the details were not perfect. But maybe, in a sense, that was part of the magic, too.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 16 (p. 220)

“It was one thing to be instantly attracted to a woman, and another to like her independence, the way she took no notice of what he thought of her, one way or the other. She was indeed a modern woman—not aggressive, yet not submissive. A self-possessed apartness, a lack of cling…
Yes, that was what held his attention: her reserve. The promise of depths you could not guess merely by seeing her in a swimsuit.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 16 (p. 229)

“Religions do not teach doubt.”

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 80; ellipsis represents a minor elision of narration)
Artifact (1985)

“The past was a jigsaw puzzle and you never had all the pieces.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 27 (p. 322)

“Yes, perhaps that was it. For decades now the picture of the world painted by the scientists had become strange, distant, unbelievable. Far easier, then, to ignore it than try to understand. Things were too complicated. Why bother? Turn on the telly, luv. Right.”

Part 1, Chapter 1 (p. 10)
Artifact (1985)

““We will be just like the USA. Only we will be more honest.”
”We’ve got two parties.”
“No you do not. You have only the party of the banks, of the money men, and they divide it into two pieces for your voting.””

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 11 (p. 146)

“Man doesn’t have to take a gamble just ’cause it’s there. You got to learn that.”

Part 2, Chapter 7 (p. 86)
Artifact (1985)

“Every boy knows he is immortal, but his parents, they are not so sure.”

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 3 (p. 68)
Against Infinity (1983)

“But the answers come when they will, one piece at a time.”

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 1 (p. 45)
Against Infinity (1983)

“The personal was, compared with the tides of great nations, a bothersome detail.”

Exposures, p. 232 (Originally published in Asimov’s, July 6, 1981)
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“But no, the friend’s indictment was off target; he simply liked them tall, as long as they didn’t slump down in a forlorn effort to appear shorter. It seemed obvious to him that no woman looked good trying to be something she wasn’t.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 43 (p. 441)

““You’ll never get it to follow orders.”
“Slaves follow orders, Colonel. You want something done a slave can’t, you don’t ask for a slave to do it.””

Part 2, Chapter 1 (p. 42)
Artifact (1985)

““Free will again,” Cathy said.
“Or free won’t,” Peterson said mildly.”

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 3 (p. 68)
Against Infinity (1983)

“Professors everywhere deplored examinations as an archaic technique, a fossil that recalled little red schoolhouses and memorizing the capitals of all the states. Regular progress and daily diligence mattered more, they felt, not an hour spent compressing months of learning onto a few sheets of paper. Far better to stress homework, classroom participation and the professor’s judgment. Regrettably, the large size of classes, and the requirements of society itself for pseudo-objective standards kept the exam structure firmly in place.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 23 (p. 291)

“Just because something’s crazy, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

Part 4, Chapter 1 (pp. 155-156)
Artifact (1985)

“Must admit it felt good. First time in years anybody ever admitted I was right.”

Part 5, Chapter 1 (p. 228)
Artifact (1985)

“Any technology that does not appear magical is insufficiently advanced.”

To the Storming Gulf, p. 142
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Gregory Benford book Foundation's Fear

This is derived from the third of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws : "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." There are other variants which had inverted this including one known as Gehm's corollary http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/cyc/l/law.htm, published several years earlier : "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." The earliest variant seems to be "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." It has been called "Niven's Law" and attributed to Larry Niven by some, and to Terry Pratchett by others, but without any citation of an original source in either case — the earliest occurrence yet located is an anonymous one in Keystone Folklore (1984) by the Pennsylvania Folklore Society. <br class="br">Foundation's Fear (1997)

“There’s plenty—”
“Plenty is exactly what there’s none of.”

“Hubris. They disliked questions unless there were clear answers. They believed so much in their method that they conjured up certainty out of undeniable risk.”

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 6 (p. 87)
Against Infinity (1983)

““The peers just fill the air with their speeches.”
“And from what I've seen, vice versa.””

Part 6, Chapter 6 (p. 349)
Artifact (1985)

“Thunder impresses, but it’s lightning does the work.”

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 5 (p. 46)