Gregory Benford: Trending quotes (page 3)

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

Gregory Benford

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 6 (p. 87)
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.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

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

People , Beauty , Mathematics , Reality

“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.”

Gregory Benford

Exposures, p. 244
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Way , Science

“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.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

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

Question

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

Gregory Benford book Timescape

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

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

Gregory Benford

Time’s Rub, p. 253 (Originally published in Asimov’s, April 1985)
In Alien Flesh (1986)

“Archeology is mostly a process of making associations between objects, and every discovery opens up possible resonances with things we already have. Sometimes, simply wandering through a museum or a site can open your eyes.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 3, Chapter 1 (p. 107)
Artifact (1985)

“This was what never failed to stir her—the unfathomable gulf between today’s thinking and the way the ancients thought. They were truly alien, not merely innocent agrarians with a foolish faith.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 5, Chapter 4 (p. 246)
Artifact (1985)

Faith , Way , Thinking

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 5, Chapter 7 (p. 270)
Artifact (1985)

“Once introduced into this world, life would never leave—there was no end to the explosive, consuming, voracious lust of long chain molecules to link and match and make of themselves yet more and more and again more.”

Gregory Benford

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

Life , World

“At least being prosperous set one apart in England; here it guaranteed nothing, not even taste.”

Gregory Benford book Timescape

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 11 (p. 134, concerning the USA)

“Modern economics and the welfare state borrowed heavily on the future.”

Gregory Benford book Timescape

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 43 (p. 445)

Future

“There was something about such reflex stupidity that never failed to irritate him.”

Gregory Benford book Timescape

Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 17 (p. 231)

Stupidity

“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.”

Gregory Benford

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

Business , Science , Help

“They will do anything for the worker, except become one.”

Gregory Benford book Timescape

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

“Maybe is not a theory, you know, it is merely maybe.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 4, Chapter 6 (p. 203)
Artifact (1985)

“Nothing could be sure it was itself the original. So the only intelligent course lay in enjoying whatever life a being felt—living like a mortal, in the moment.”

Gregory Benford

Time’s Rub, p. 261
In Alien Flesh (1986)

Life , Intelligence

“Still, Claire hated Charlotte Brontë’s comment that she would have given all her talent to be beautiful. That condemned you always to play somebody else’s game—and, when your looks failed—finally to lose.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 5, Chapter 4 (p. 245)
Artifact (1985)

Hate , Beauty , Game

“Major Sánchez grunted. “Nice word, ‘trivial.’ Means you got it—cojones—you got no worry. If you don’t—””

Gregory Benford

Part 1 “Beyond Sidon”, Chapter 2 (p. 12)
Against Infinity (1983)

“She stood up. “Professional? Ha! My father used to say, you have to be able to tell a tracheotomist from a cutthroat. Well, I can.””

Gregory Benford Artifact

Artifact (1985), Part 4, Chapter 4 (p. 186)