Kim Stanley Robinson: Trending quotes (page 2)

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

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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

“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.”

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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson

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)

Science

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson

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

Money , War , People , Stupidity

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson

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

World , Thinking , Change

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

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

People , Dogs , Boy

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson

thoughts of Frank Chalmers
Red Mars (1992)

Women , Men , Stupidity , Education

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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

People , Sense , Learning , Help

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

Kim Stanley Robinson book Green Mars

Nadia Chernyshevski
Green Mars (1993)

People , Fools

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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.

Truth , Understanding , Knowledge

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

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

World , Law , Mathematics

“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.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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

Past , Future

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

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)

Learning , Teachers

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

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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

Color , Time

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

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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.
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.

Understanding

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

Kim Stanley Robinson book Green Mars

Coyote
Green Mars (1993)

People

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

Kim Stanley Robinson book The Years of Rice and Salt

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

Law , Universe

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

Kim Stanley Robinson

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