Poul Anderson: Trending quotes

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Poul Anderson: 280 quotes0 likes

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

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

“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…”

Delenda Est (p. 177)
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.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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.”

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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

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

Source: Harvest of Stars (1993), Ch. 63

““Are you that afraid to die?”
“No. I simply like to live.””

Poul Anderson book Tau Zero

Source: Tau Zero (1970), Chapter 7 (p. 78)

“The last thing any sane person wants is a jihad.”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 2 “Arsenal Port”, Chapter VIII (p. 133)
The Star Fox (1965)

“Sincerity is the most overrated virtue in the catalogue.”

Star of the Sea (p. 637)
Time Patrol

“We're mortal - which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?”

Ensign Flandry (1966)

“And ninety-nine percent of the human race, no matter how smart they are, will do the convenient thing instead of the wise thing, and kid themselves into thinking they can somehow escape the consequences. We’re just built that way.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 4 (p. 28)