John Barnes Quotes

“Once I’m dead, I can afford to be patient.”

“Philosophic clarity has been a key to his life in business, and he doesn’t fall for facile or self-flattering descriptions—not even, usually, for the self-flattery of thinking he is immune to self-flattery.”

“It's a good idea for diplomats to keep their word in small matters. It makes the later complete betrayals more of a surprise.”

“Human beings always say they prefer peace, but it takes a saint to talk us into not assaulting our neighbors.”

“With diligent effort he has established that there is no statistical basis for Murphy’s Law. He has also established that he believes in it anyway.”

“And just like this, all of a sudden, your people and mine will begin to talk?" "It only looks sudden from some places. Running off a cliff is sudden if you don't know it's there, even if you have been running toward it for days." "That's not a reassuring metaphor.”

“People who put principles before people are people who hate people. They don’t much care about how well it works, just about how right it is... they may even like it better if it inflicts enough pain.”

“Too bad about all those people, but as Hassan says, compassion speaks well of its holder but does little for its recipient.”

“In discussing the existence, or not, of the soul: "I am Caledon. Quite a few of my fellow Caledons still believe there is some essence to a human being, something that makes a person unique." "And you don't." "I don't. I see that people who believe in anything beyond plain physical reality are mainly engaged in making themselves or others miserable."”

“I know I pretend to be the apolitical businessman a lot, but the reality is that like anybody who’s interested in getting people together with the things they need and want, I have an agenda. I want people to get what they want, and I want them ideally to get it fro me, but most of all I want them to be free to want it and to make offers to get it. Those poor stupid fanatics have ben sold on the idea that what they want is the ability to give themselves a little priggish congratulations over having done the right thing. They’d rather be right than happy. More importantly, they’d rather that I be right than happy and they’re not about to leave the choice up to me. I say, let ‘em die, and I hope it’s slow and it hurts.”

“He’s stunned numb when she takes his hand and says, “Let’s give it a try. I’ve been thinking maybe I don’t bend enough or try to see anyone else’s point of view.””

“Almost every culture in the Thousand Cultures had some wisdom literature, and much of it was the same between any two cultures.... Cultures tend to be alike in much of what they think are the basic virtues, but one of the ones they are most alike in, though it rarely appears in their book of wisdom, is: Distrust strangers, fear foreigners, dread novelty.”

“Experimentally she thinks about dumping toxic waste in pristine wilderness and killing the last great apes on earth with a club. She still finds both those thoughts disgusting. This is a relief; it seems to her that she’s just selfish, not evil.
She was always taught they’re the same thing. She hopes she remembers, when she gets out of all this, that they’re not.”

“There is a saying among those of us who have careers with the Council of Humanity that skiers, cooks, painters, and diplomats must work with what is in front of them.”

“He’s always known the real way to money is not through production but through control; “The hotel owner gets rich owning the keys, the maids stay poor keeping the toilets clean,” as one of his biz profs back at Madison used to say.”

“It is characteristic of information that it can be stolen an all but unlimited number of times.”

“Work does not cause money; getting paid causes money.”

“Shan had always said that in any multiple choice about human motivation, the real answer was always "all of the above."”

“The beautiful earth is being crapped up by an excess of people—lovely as individuals, towns, and cultures, but hideous in such profusion.”

“He wonders if there is some requirement that you have to be an idiot to be a politician.”

“Are you up to faking being sincere underneath faking being fake?”

“One of the stranger beliefs in science fiction is a passionate belief in Beautiful Writing--lots and lots of extraspecial exciting words thrown no hurled no CASCADED upon the reader in a shimmering shower of precious verbal gleaming gleanings and a singing pillar of righteous fiery syntactic spinach. The only thing that was good in that sentence was the spinach, and the hell with it.”

“If you want to learn a culture, you have to learn how to like what it likes, rather than go looking for something that you like.”

“Yeats fussed about things falling apart and the center not being able to hold. What really happened was that the center ceased to exist altogether.”

“It’s a game against the clock, but what isn’t?”

“Once you understand what money can do it gets harder to live without it.”

“[Regarding politicians]... like any group of people selected for ambition and nothing else, they turn out to be a pretty bad lot. Like mandarins in China, colonial administrators in the British Empire, lawyers in old North America, or the reconstruction agencies after the Slaughter -- individually there are decent people who do some good, but as a class they’re amoral, vicious leeches with a good cover story.”

“Finally she resorts to the oldest tactic of all, telling the truth.”

“They’re so dedicated to logic and reason that common sense hasn’t got much to do with it.”

“The drive to see what’s over the next hill is in part the fear that one may never know, that if one doesn’t go over the hill today, one may never get farther than the village graveyard.”

“Justice has a way of not arriving where and when you wish it.”

“The way you can tell there’s democracy going on is that nothing gets done.”

“When all else fails, admit you’re an idiot.”

“The more rules you impose on a creative intelligence, of course, the fewer problems it can solve.”