Joe Haldeman Quotes

“The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.

Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?”

“She hadn’t been such a bad girl before the power went to her head.”

“Maybe after the war we’ll be civilized again. That’s the way it has always happened in the past.”

“We did it with their government’s foreknowledge and permission, of course—and there were no civilian casualties, equally of course. Once they’re dead they’re rebels.”

“Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.”

“It was an ideological war for some—the defenders of democracy versus the rebel strong-arm charismatic leaders. Or the capitalist land-grabbers versus the protectors of the people, take your pick.”

“Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human.”

“She smiled. “I wouldn’t mind. Is that a difference between men and women or between you and me?”
“I think it’s a difference between you and merely sane people.””

“Men started to geoform the earth in the middle of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, a lot of the early work was done by people who failed to see the earth as a closed set of mutually interrelated systems.”

“There's no such thing as writing about the future. The future hasn't happened yet.”

“CAROL: You don’t care for the music?
JACQUE: Music! It’s just a gimmick to sell lutes and flutes.”

“If you asked him, he would say the only connection between free will and religion in his life was the fact that he hadn’t set foot in a synagogue since he turned eighteen.”

“I had to stifle an impulse to laugh. Surely “cowardice“ had nothing to do with his decision. Surely he had nothing so primitive and unmilitary as a will to live.”

“I never found anyone else and I don’t want anyone else. I don’t care whether you’re ninety years old or thirty. If I can’t be your lover, I’ll be your nurse.”

“We’re inferring from an absence of data,” Jacque said. “That’s lousy science.”

““Everybody rich and happy.” She smiled. “Also complacent and rather stupid, you may have noticed.””

“Nobody else in that platoon can tell a Hamiltonian from a hamburger.”

“Some are born crazy,” Amelia said. “Some achieve craziness. We had craziness thrust upon us.”

“I have always valued quiet, and the eternity of it that I face is no more dreadful than the eternity of quiet that preceded my birth.”

“It was so much more complicated than it had to be, but the changeling had noted that this was true of every human biological function that wasn’t involuntary.”

“Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction.”

“Human nature does change, and the fact that we’ve developed tools to direct that change is quintessentially human. And it must be a nearly universal concomitant to technological growth everywhere in the universe; otherwise there would be no universe. Unless we’re the only technological intelligence in the universe, Julian pointed out; so far there’s no evidence to the contrary. Maybe our own existence is evidence that we’re the first creatures to evolve far enough to hit the reset button. Somebody does have to be first.
But maybe the first is always the last.”

“It was making me a little queasy. Doctors don’t seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop.”

“Like a lot of things that everybody knows, it wasn’t true.”

“Rationalism doesn’t require “belief,” only observation. The real, measurable world doesn’t care what you believe.”