Kim Stanley Robinson Quotes

“What we need is equality without conformity.”

Source: Green Mars

“Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.”

Source: Green Mars (1993)

Kim Stanley Robinson Mars trilogy

Source: Red Mars (1992)

“Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant.”

Kim Stanley Robinson Mars trilogy

Source: Red Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson Quotes about people

“Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation.”

“You could never teach other people anything that mattered. The important things they had to learn for themselves, almost always by making mistakes, so that the lessons arrived too late to help. Experience was in that sense useless. It was precisely what could not be passed along in a lesson or an equation.”

Frank Chalmers
Red Mars (1992)

“If the amount of money going into the war economy were invested in landscape restoration, we would be in a far more positive position. It may get a little dire before we pull together, but I think when the prosperous nations, and in particular the US, realise they're wrecking their own kids' lives, there will be a mass change in value. It will be a difficult century, and ugly, but I don't think that in the end people are so stupid as to kill themselves off.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 20, p. 513–514

“What kind of story am I going to give them next? Because that's what we are to other people, boy, we are their gossip. That's all civilization is, a giant mill grinding out gossip. And so I could be the story of the man who rode high and fell hard, and had his spirit broken and crawled off into a hole like a dog, to die as soon as he could manage it. Or I could be the story of a man who rode high and fell hard, and then got up defiant, and walked away in a new direction.”

As quoted in "Future tense" in The Guardian (14 September 2005) http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/sep/14/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.sarahcrown

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 4: "The Alchemist", § 11
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making.”

“The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing.”

Interview http://www.locusmag.com/1997/Issues/09/KSRobinson.html in Locus, (September 1997) <br class="br">Context: Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making. The whole process of science is wildly under-represented in science fiction because it's not easy to write about. There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys — it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not.

“Yes. God makes the world using mathematics, and he has given us minds that can see it. We can discover the laws He used! It is a most beautiful thing to witness and understand! It's prayer. It's more than prayer, it's a sacrament, a kind of communion. An apprehension—an epiphany—it's seeing God, while still in this body and in this world! How blessed we are, to be able to experience God like that! Who would not devote their time to understanding more, to seeing deeper in God's manner of thinking about these things?”

John Boone
Red Mars (1992)
Context: The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y.

Kim Stanley Robinson Quotes about the world

“A sudden gust: How big the world seems in a wind.”

As quoted in John Clute, "Scores" http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20100118/clute-c.shtml, in Strange Horizons (18 January 2010) <br class="br">Galileo's Dream (2009)

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 1: "Awake to Emptiness", Ch. 1
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“I think the US is in a terrible state of denial … Worse than that, we seem to be caught in a kind of Götterdämmerung response: we'd rather have the world go down in flames than change our lifestyle or admit we're wrong.”

“The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.”

As quoted in "Future tense" in The Guardian (14 September 2005)

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 9: "Nsara", § 5
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“Only a few people in this world were lucky enough to run into their true partners—it took outrageous luck for it to happen, then the sense to recognize it, and the courage to act. Few could be expected to have all that, and then to have things go well. The rest had to make do.”

“Anyone can agree that things should be fair, and the world just. The way to get there is always the real problem.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 8, “The Green and the White” (p. 393)

“There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. It's slow, tedious, inconclusive, it's hard to tell good guys from bad guys — it's everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 7, “What Is to Be Done?” (p. 391)

Kim Stanley Robinson: Trending quotes

“Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you have to argue point by point. Especially since the minimalists want to keep the economic and police system that keeps them privileged.”

“Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out. But in the realm of ideas one can become idealistic.”

Coyote ("What Is to Be Done?", p. 370)
Green Mars (1993)
Context: Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you have to argue point by point. Especially since the minimalists want to keep the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. No! If you want to make the minimum-state case, you have to argue it from the ground up.

“Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 14, p. 329

Kim Stanley Robinson Quotes

“People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 280
Context: We all have seven secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes; our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one ever knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.

“Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves.”

Kim Stanley Robinson Mars trilogy

Source: Red Mars

“Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.”

“Rock is much more malleable than ideas.”

Source: Green Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 6: "Widow Kang", Ch. 3
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“Plague was plague, and could not be treated lightly. And this plague was obviously worse than most, having killed everyone in the region.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 1: "Awake to Emptiness", Ch. 2
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“One of the chief features of incompetence was an inability to see it in oneself.”

“He often spoke aloud to himself now, or hummed, without ever noticing it, as if ignoring an old companion who always said the same things.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 295

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 1: "Awake to Emptiness", Ch. 2
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“Science is--or should be--the greenest force of all.”

“When some French were assembling an encyclopedia of paranormal experiences, they decided to leave déjà vu out, because it was so common it could not be considered paranormal.”

As quoted in "Heroes of the Environment 2008" http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841778_1841779_1841803,00.html in Time (24 September 2008)

“They were so ignorant! Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, just like always. It was appalling how stupid they were, really, and he could not help lashing into them.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 284

“It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power.”

thoughts of Frank Chalmers
Red Mars (1992)

“This vain presumption, of understanding everything, can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the understanding of one single thing, thus truly tasting how knowledge is accomplished, would then recognize that of the infinity of other truths, he understands nothing.”

Nadia Chernyshevski
Green Mars (1993)

“There was nothing for it but to pace through just behind or ahead of the spooling present that was never there, caught in the nonexistent interval between the nonexistent past and the nonexistent future.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 15, p. 354; note: though this statement is incorporated into the story as one Galileo spoke, it is actually a quotation of one he historically made in his Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kimler/hi322/Dialogue-extracts.html as translated by Stillman Drake.

“It is always the teacher who must learn the most … or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 13, p. 282

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 2: "The Haj in the Heart", Ch. 5
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“The sky itself is the eighth color of the rainbow, spread over the whole sky for us, all the time.”

“This vain presumption, of understanding everything, can have no other basis than never understanding anything.”

Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 15, p. 354

“You can't get any movement larger than five people without including at least one fucking idiot.”

For anyone who had experienced just once the understanding of one single thing, thus truly tasting how knowledge is accomplished, would then recognize that of the infinity of other truths, he understands nothing. <br class="br">Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 15, p. 354; note: though this statement is incorporated into the story as one Galileo spoke, it is actually a quotation of one he historically made in his Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kimler/hi322/Dialogue-extracts.html as translated by Stillman Drake.

“We live in a universe ruled by very few laws, but the redoubling of violence by violence is one of the main ones.”

Coyote
Green Mars (1993)

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

Book 3: "Ocean Continents"
The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

“It’s a sorry excuse for a government anyway. It always gets back to the same old thing, power suckers sucking power.”

“Anytime you have to threaten people to get them to laugh at your joke you have to consider it less than successful, okay?”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 14, “Phoenix Lake” (p. 750)

“People in the streets, that’s the only thing governments are afraid of. Well, or term limits. Or free elections! Or assassination. Or being laughed at, ah, ha-ha-ha!”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 14, “Phoenix Lake” (p. 748)

“We’ve moved beyond our ability to understand our technology.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 14, “Phoenix Lake” (pp. 746-747)

“Science was a social construct, but it was also and most importantly its own space, conforming to reality only; that was its beauty. Truth is beauty, as the poet had said, speaking of science. And it was; the poet had been right”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 13, “Experimental Procedures” (p. 692)

“No—living on after the memory died was mere farce, pointless and awful.”

they weren’t always
Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 13, “Experimental Procedures” (p. 657)

“One could not overshoot a planet’s carrying capacity without disaster following—that was what Earth’s history since the nineteenth century existed to prove.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 13, “Experimental Procedures” (p. 644)

“Ah, never fear; death could be trusted to show up. No doubt well before she wanted it.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 621)

“Immigration worked as a time machine, bringing up little islands of the past into the present.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 603)

“Why were the good days always so short? Moment to moment, day by day—each so full, and oh so lovely—and then gone forever, gone before there was a chance to absorb them properly, to really live them.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 598)

“The triviality of the current scene usually put her off, but now she supposed that the politics of the moment always looked petty and stupid; only later did it take on the look of respectable statecraft, of immutable History.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 566)

“Dominance hierarchies had underlain every system ever realized so far, but at the same time democratic values had been always a hope and a goal, expressed in every primate’s sense of self, and resentment of hierarchies that after all had to be imposed, by force.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 12, “It Goes So Fast” (p. 563)

“It’s amazing what superstitions survive in fearful minds.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 11, “Viriditas” (p. 483)

“Politics in its most common form: complaint. No one wanted to do it but everyone was happy to complain about it.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 10, “Werteswandel” (p. 462)

“A change in the form of government, why should that make a difference in the way he lived?”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 9, “Natural History” (p. 433)

“Could politics ever be anything but politics, practical, cynical, compromised, ugly?”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 8, “The Green and the White” (p. 381)

“Tourism is an ugly business, it’s not fit work for human beings. It’s hosting parasites.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 8, “The Green and the White” (p. 363)

“Power is like matter, it has gravity, it clumps and then starts to draw more into itself.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 5, “Home At Last” (p. 239)

“You must be very scrupulous not to gather power in to the center just because you can do it. Power corrupts, that’s the basic law of politics. Maybe the only law.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 4, “Green Earth” (p. 166)

“After every revolution there is an interregnum, in which communities run themselves and all is well, and then the new regime comes in and screws things up.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 3, “A New Constitution” (p. 156)

“People claiming that some fundamental right is foreign to their culture—that stinks no matter who says it, fundamentalists, patriarchs, Leninists, metanats, I don’t care who. They aren’t going to get away with it here, not if I can help it.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 3, “A New Constitution” (p. 156)

“Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 3, “A New Constitution” (pp. 128-129)

“But one had to trust instruments over instincts, that was science.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 2, “Areophany” (p. 80)

“Not everyone was as good at creation as they were at complaining.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 2, “Areophany” (p. 70)

“Revolution suspends habit as well as law. But just as nature abhors a vacuum, people abhor anarchy.”

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 2, “Areophany” (p. 64)

“Every generation is its own secret society.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 10, “Phase Change” (p. 579)

“Conspiracy theory was tremendously popular, always and forever. People wanted such catastrophes to mean something more than mere individual madness, and so the hunt was on.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 9, “The Spur of the Moment” (p. 480)

“If enough data points trouble the theory, the theory may be wrong. If the theory is basic, the paradigm may have to change.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 9, “The Spur of the Moment” (p. 450)

“You conceive of science as nothing more than answers to questions?
As a system for generating answers.
And what is the purpose of that?
...To know.
And what will you do with your knowledge?
...Find out more.
But why?
I don’t know. It’s the way I am.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 8, “Social Engineering” (p. 410)

“Nakedness was dangerous to the social order, she thought, because it revealed too much reality.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 8, “Social Engineering” (p. 401)

“When she realized what she was doing she snorted in disgust, at herself and at the pervasiveness of politics—how it could infect everything if you let it.”

Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 7, “What Is to Be Done?” (p. 395)