Poul Anderson Quotes

“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.”

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

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

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

“Too far a retreat from reality is insanity.”

Time Patrol (p. 42)
Time Patrol

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

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

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

“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.”

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

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

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

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

Delenda Est (p. 203)
Time Patrol

““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.””

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

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

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

“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)

“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.””

“Mortal combat corrupts, and war corrupts absolutely.”

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

““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.””

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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…”

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

“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.”

Delenda Est (p. 177)
Time Patrol

“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.”

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

“It was lonely, not even knowing yourself.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

Poul Anderson book Tau Zero

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

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

“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.”

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

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

Often referred to as Anderson's Law. <br class="br">Cited in: <br class="br">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. <br class="br">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. <br class="br">Attributed

“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.””

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

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

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

“All those agonizing philosophical-theological conundrums amount to "Ask a silly question, get a silly answer."”

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