Poul Anderson Quotes (140 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The High Crusade

Poul Anderson

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Famous Poul Anderson Quotes

“A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.”

Poul Anderson

Source: Harvest of Stars

“I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on… It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.”

Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson: Fifty Years of Science Fiction (1997)

“On our Earth, we’ve perforce learned all the knavery there is to know.”

Poul Anderson book The High Crusade

Source: The High Crusade (1960), p. 131

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (p. 52)

“Men, whose span is cruelly short, rush nonetheless to death in their youth as to a maiden’s arms.”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 10 (p. 55)

“Hurry and hurry, autumn leaves hurrying on the rainy wind, snow hurrying out of the sky, life hurrying to death, gods hurrying to oblivion.”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 3 (p. 9)

Poul Anderson Quotes about life

“Life isn’t a fairy tale; the knight who kills the dragon doesn’t necessarily get the princess. So what? Who’d want to live in a cosmos less rich and various than the real one?”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 3 “Admiralty”, Chapter X (p. 207)
The Star Fox (1965)

“We need a reserve of life, every kind of life,” he explained. “Today for the spirit—a glimpse of space and green. Tomorrow for survival, flat-out survival.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (p. 53)

““You are much too kind,” said Holger, overwhelmed.
“Nay.” Alfric waved his hand. “You mortals know not how tedious undying life can become, and how gladly a challenge such as this is greeted. ’Tis I should thank you.””

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 7 (p. 64)

““At least we can put a little sense into life.”
“I don’t know whether we do or whether we find what was always there,” he replied. “Nor do I care greatly. To me, the important thing is that the purpose—order, beauty, spirit, whatever you want to call it—does exist.””

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 18 (p. 148)

“Hard to say whether personal immortality would be a good thing or not. Not for the masses, surely! Too many of them as it was. But a select few, like Terangi Maclaren—or was it worth the trouble? Even given boats, chess, music, the No Drama, beautiful women and beautiful spectroscopes, life could get heavy.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 5 (p. 36)

“I’m afraid I’m not a convert or anything. I still see the same blind cosmos governed by the same blind laws. But suddenly it matters. It matters terribly, and means something. What, I haven’t figured out yet. I probably never will. But I have a reason for living, or for dying if need be. Maybe that’s the whole purpose of life: purpose itself. I can’t say. But I expect to enjoy the world a lot more.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 15 (p. 129)

Poul Anderson Quotes about people

““Do you actually hope to convert the whole of mankind?”
“Belay that! Anyhow, if you mean, Do we hope to make everybody into copies of us? The answer is, No. Mind, I’m not in Parliament or Admiralty, but I follow debates and I read the philosophers. One trouble with the old machine culture was that, by its nature, it did force people to become more and more alike. Not only did this fail in the end—disastrously—but to the extent it succeeded, it was a worse disaster.” Lohannaso smote the rail with a mighty fist. “Damnation, Thomas! We need all the diversity, all the assorted ways of living and looking and thinking, we can get!””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 11 (p. 119)

“People usually take for granted that the way things are is the way things must be.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Foreward (p. v)
The Enemy Stars (1959)

“The old man murmured: “Aye, we draw to an end. Dying hurts. Nonetheless the forefathers were wise who in their myths made Nan coequal with Lesu. A thing which endured forever would become unendurable. Death opens a way, for peoples as well as for people.””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 11 (p. 124)

“Then they died.
And other men came after them. Wars flamed up and burned out; the howling peoples dwelt in smashed cities and kindled their fires with books.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Prologue (p. 1)
The Enemy Stars (1959)

“Don’t get me wrong. These people are mine. I like and in many ways admire them. They’re the salt of the earth. It’s simply that I want other condiments too.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 1 (p. 10)

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Poul Anderson: Trending quotes

“Light fills the air, wind is aglow, drink of it, breathe of it, make leafing.
Rainfall sows itself, it grows down through soil to the secret places where stones abide; it brings the strength of them up rootward.
Lie still, molder away, then be again grass.”

Poul Anderson

Source: Harvest of Stars (1993), Ch. 55

Lie , Secret , Drink , Light

“So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way…”

Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson: Fifty Years of Science Fiction (1997)

Way , Science , Future

“You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen.”

Poul Anderson

"Garden in the Void" (1952)
Short fiction

Poul Anderson Quotes

“You should pay no heed to what some yokel priest has prated of. What does he know?”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 11 (p. 70)

“I walk beyond town, many of these nights, to stand under the high autumnal stars, look upward and wonder.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 16 (p. 176; closing words)

Star , Autumn , Night

“Another irritating thing about Naqsans was their habit of solemnly repeating the obvious. In that respect they were almost as bad as humans.”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 2 “Arsenal Port”, Chapter III (p. 90)
The Star Fox (1965)

“We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?”

Poul Anderson

"The Fatal Fulfillment" (Short Story), March 1970. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Short fiction

“For himself, he had never thought it would be this bad. He had stopped remembering her, except maybe ten times a day, but now she came to him and the forgetting would have to be done all over again.”

Poul Anderson

Brave To Be a King (p. 63)
Time Patrol

Time , Forgetting

“I’m still spry, but I feel the teeth gnawing, and believe me, my friends, it was better to be young.”

Poul Anderson

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks (p. 314)
Time Patrol

Feeling

“Man does not live by bread alone, nor guns, paperwork, theses, naked practicalities.”

Poul Anderson

Gibraltar Falls (p. 118)
Time Patrol

“Missile: A self-contained device which delivers high explosives from the air, condemned because of its effects upon women, children, the aged, the sick, and other non-combatants, unless these happen to have resided in Saigon, Da Nang, Hué, etc. Cf. bombing.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Variant: Bombing: A method of warfare which delivers high explosives from the air, condemned because of its effects upon women, children, the aged, the sick, and other non-combatants, unless these happen to have resided in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Osaka, etc., though not Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Cf. missile.
Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 3 (p. 30)

Women , Children , Age

“But your sign says you can conjure up ever-filled purses,” Holger began.
“Advertising,” Martinus admitted. “Corroborative detail intended to lend artistic verisimilitude.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 17 (p. 162)

“Above everything else, perhaps, was today’s concept of working together. I don’t mean its totalitarian version, for which Jack Havig had total loathing, or that “togetherness,” be it in a corporation or a commune, which he despised. I mean an enlightened pragmatism that rejects self-appointed aristocrats, does not believe received doctrine is necessarily true, stands ready to hear and weigh what anyone has to offer, and maintains well-developed channels to carry all ideas to the leadership and back again.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 14 (p. 155)

Communication , Idea

“I think most human misery is due to well-meaning fanatics like him.”

Poul Anderson

Time Patrol (p. 42)
Time Patrol

Thinking

“Too far a retreat from reality is insanity.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 10 (p. 82)

Reality

“Holger wished he had read the old tales more closely; he had only a dim childhood recollection of them.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 10 (p. 88)

Reading , Childhood

“She rarely saw priest—and knowing her heart sinned, was glad of that. Dreary was a church after the woodlands and hills and sounding sea. She still loved God—and was not the earth His work, and a church only man’s?—but she could not bring herself to call on Him very often.”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 24 (p. 174)

Love , God , Heart , Sea

“Everard sighed, switched off his conscience, and began lying.”

Poul Anderson

Delenda Est (p. 203)
Time Patrol

Lying

“As evil waxes, the very men who stand for good will in their fear use ever worse means o’ fighting, and thereby give evil a free beachhead.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 12 (p. 102)

Men , Fear , Evil , Fight

““I think you look on death as your friend,” she murmured. “That is a strange friend for a young man to have.”
“The only faithful friend in this world,” he said. “Death is always sure to be at your side.””

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 21 (p. 148)

Death , World , Faith , Thinking

“Here was more than a question of law; it was a matter of whose will should prevail.”

Poul Anderson

The Sorrow of Odin the Goth (p. 433)
Time Patrol

Law , Question

“Winter lay among the Outer Hebrides. Day was a sullen glimmer between two darknesses, often smothered in snow. When it did not fling itself upon the rocks and burst in freezing spume, the North Atlantic rolled in heavy and gnawing. There was no real horizon; leaden waves met leaden sky and misty leaden light hid the seam.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 2 (p. 8)

Light , Winter

“Heim ignored the mob scene on the 3V, rested his eyes on the cold serenity of the Milky Way and thought that this, at least, would endure.”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 1 “Marque and Reprisal”, Chapter IX (p. 69)
The Star Fox (1965)

Way

“The end of the world—was the sky going to open up, would the angels pour down the vials of wrath on a shaking land, and would God appear to judge the sons of men? He listened for the noise of great galloping hoofs, but there was only the wind in the trees.
That was the worst of it. The sky didn’t care. The Earth went on turning through an endlessness of dark and silence, and what happened in the thin scum seething over its crust didn’t matter.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 5 (p. 40)

Men , God , World , Angels

“A little careful pushing, and they’ll bury the hatchet all right—in each other.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 9 (p. 76)

““I really liked that girl.”
“Not loved, evidently,” I observed.
“N-n-no. I supposed not. Though what is love, anyway? Doesn’t it have so infinitely many kinds and degrees and mutations and quantum jumps that— Never mind.””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 8 (p. 83)

Love , Girl

“Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 10 (p. 107)

War

““Your son was in your own tradition.”
“Better, I hope,” said the old man. “There would be little sense to existence, did boys have no chance to be more than their fathers.””

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 18 (p. 150)

Hope , Boy , Sense , Chance

“If anything does change man,” he said, “it’s science and technology. Just think about the fact—while it lasts—that parents need not take for granted some of their babies will die. You get a completely different concept of what a child is.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 6 (p. 60)

Thinking , Parent , Science , Change

“Know that against time the gods themselves are powerless.”

Poul Anderson

The Sorrow of Odin the Goth (p. 457)
Time Patrol

God , Time

“Everard was not so sure; he had seen enough human misery in all the ages. You got case-hardened after a while, but down underneath, when a peasant stared at you with sick brutalized eyes, or a soldier screamed with a pike through him, or a city went up in radioactive flame, something wept. He could understand the fanatics who had tried to change events. It was only that their work was so unlikely to make anything better…”

Poul Anderson

Delenda Est (p. 177)
Time Patrol

Age , Understanding , Change

“They were not plagued that night, which Hugi said was without doubt because something worse was being prepared. Holger was inclined to share the dwarf’s pessimism.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 12 (p. 101)

Night

“Li-Tsung of Krasna would have told him to live at all costs, sacrifice all the others, to save himself for his planet and the Fellowship. But there were limits. You didn’t have to accept Dave’s Calvinism—though its unmerciful God seemed very near this dead star—to swallow the truth that some things were more important than survival. Than even the survival of a cause.
Maybe I’m trying to find out what those things are, he thought confusedly.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 11 (p. 92)

God , Truth , Star , Dead

“It was lonely, not even knowing yourself.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 4 (p. 41)

“Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom?”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 12 (p. 130)

Freedom

“What’s to explain? I’ve scant use for those types whose chief interest is their grubby little personal neuroses. Not in a universe as rich as this.”

Poul Anderson book Tau Zero

Source: Tau Zero (1970), Chapter 8 (p. 80)

Universe , Personality

“You cannot imagine how wearisome existence grows, alone and immortal.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 19 (p. 177)

Imagination

“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.”

Poul Anderson

Often referred to as Anderson's Law.
Cited in:
Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling by Harold Kerzner. Google Books http://books.google.com/books?id=4CqvpWwMLVEC&pg=PA246. Accessed September 5, 2009.
Checkland, P.B. (1985). Formulating problems in Systems Analysis. In: Miser, H. J. and Quade E. S. (eds.) (1985). Handbook of Systems Analysis: Overview of Uses, Procedures, Applications, and Practice. Chapter 5, pp. 151-170. North-Holland, New York.
Attributed

Way , Problem

“Pioneering is an unlimited chance to become the biggest frog, provided the puddle is small enough.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 5 (p. 31)

Chance

“The air was cold and smelled of earth. Birds twittered. “Beyond one or two hundred years back,” Havig once said to me, “the daytime sky is always full of wings.””

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 6 (p. 60)

Bird

“Be calm. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 11 (p. 126)