Poul Anderson: Trending quotes

“There are three Powers in the world which not gods nor demons nor men can stay, against which no magic shall prevail and no might shall stand, and they are the White Christ, Time, and Love.
From the first you may await only thwarting of your desire, and you must be careful that He and His in no way enter the struggle. This you can do by remembering that Heaven leaves lesser beings their free will, and thus does not force them into its own ways; even the miracles have done no more than leave open a possibility to men.
The second, which has more names than I myself—Fate, Destiny, Law, Wyrd, the Norns, Necessity, Brahm, and others beyond counting—is not to be appealed to, for it does not hear. Nor can you hope to understand how it exists together with the freedom whereof I spoke, any more than you can understand how there are both old gods and new. But for the wreaking of the greatest spells, you must ponder on this until you know in your inmost being that truth is a thing which bears as many shapes as there are minds which strive to see it.
And the third of the Powers is a mortal thing, therefore it can harm as well as help, and this is the one you must use.”

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

“A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die.”

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 6 (pp. 26-27)

“You have to have some kind of morality,” he said.
“Sure. Like you have to have motives for doing anything at all. Still, I think we’re beyond that smug sort of code which proclaimed crusades and burned heretics and threw dissenters into concentration camps. We need more personal and less public honor.”

"Ghetto" (1954)
Short fiction

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 20 (p. 152)

“The city was breaking state and national laws every day—it had to—and the governor was outraged. He wanted to bring the whole state back under his own authority. It wasn’t an unreasonable wish, but the times weren’t ripe; and when they eventually were, the old forms of government would be no more important than the difference between Homoousian and Homoiousian. But it was going to take a lot of argument to convince the Albany man of that.”

Poul Anderson book Brain Wave

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

“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.””

“Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.”

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

“He’d seen too often how little of the universe is designed for man to neglect any safety measure.”

Source: Harvest of Stars (1993), Ch. 60

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 2 “Arsenal Port”, Chapter III (p. 93)
The Star Fox (1965)

“History does not tend to the better, Doc, it does not, it does not. We imagine so because events have produced our glorious selves. Think, however. Put aside the romantic legends and look at the facts. The average Frenchman in 1800 was no more unfree than the average Englishman. The French Empire could have brought Europe together, and could have been liberalized from within, and there might have been no World War I in which Western civilization cut its own throat. Because that’s what’s happened, you know. We’re still busy bleeding to death, but we haven’t far to go now.”

“Over unforced love, the gods themselves had no might.”

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 50-51)

“I say that a God who would come between two who have been to each other what we have been, is not one I would heed.”

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 12 (p. 76)

“Tis colder outside than a well-born maiden’s heart.”

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 20 (p. 141)

“Look, these were none of them supermen. In fact, they were either weaklings who’d been assigned civilian-type jobs, or warriors as ignorant and superstitious as brutal. Aside from what specialized training fitted them for Wallis’s purposes, he’d never tried to get them properly educated. If nothing else, that might have led to questioning of his righteousness and infallibility.”

Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 24 (p. 171)

“Say on. If you are a rogue, you are at least an interesting one.”

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 15 (p. 165)

“Like sensible people throughout history, the average Phoenician wanted as little to do with his government as possible.”

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks (p. 286)
Time Patrol

“What I’m trying to make you know, not in your forebrain but in your marrow, is that reality never conforms very well to the textbooks, and sometimes it doesn’t conform at all.”

Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks (p. 313)
Time Patrol

“I cannot believe you harbor any illusions about the barbarians being nature’s noblemen. I soon lost mine. They were every bit as ruthless. They were simply less efficient.”

The Sorrow of Odin the Goth (p. 387)
Time Patrol

“What I want is to commune with the land. In company I couldn’t admit that. It’d sound too pompous, as though I were from Greenpeace or the People’s Republic of Berkeley.”

Star of the Sea (p. 523)
Time Patrol