David Brin citations (123 citations, Page 2)

David Brin: 123 citations0 J'aime

David Brin: Citations en anglais

““You think I'm kidding?” the pilot asked.
“No, we think you're crazy.””

Part IV (p. 185)
Earth (1990)

“It also became clear why the nations were expected to commence major space enterprises. Henceforth, the raw materials for industrial civilization were to be taken from Earth’s lifeless sisters, not the mother world. All mines currently being gouged through Terra’s crust were to be phased out within a generation and no new ones started. Henceforth, Earth must be preserved for the real treasures—its species—and man would have to look elsewhere for mere baubles like gold or platinum or iron.”

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David Brin livre Earth

Part XI (pp. 634-635)
Earth (1990)

“Had I been wrong, this would still have been the honorable thing to do.
I am very glad, however, to find out that I was right.”

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David Brin livre The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 110 (p. 626)

“It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.”

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David Brin livre The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 10 (p. 66)

“Of course we can establish constitutional checks and balances, but those won’t mean a thing unless citizens make sure the safeguards are taken seriously. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.”

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David Brin livre The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 14 (p. 266)

“It was better to imagine a sacrifice being for something.”

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David Brin livre Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 51 (p. 269)

“Maia recognized a look of true religion in the other woman’s eyes. A version and interpretation that conveniently justified what had already been decided.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 14 (p. 240)

“The notions she fought with needed more than the simple algebra she’d been grudgingly taught at Lamai Hold. More and more she resented how they had robbed her of this, arguably her one talent, driving her from math and other abstractions by the simple expedient of making them seem boring.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 19 (p. 337)

“Anyone who loves nature, as I do, cries out at the havoc being spread by humans, all over the globe. The pressures of city life can be appalling, as are the moral ambiguities that plague us, both at home and via yammering media. The temptation to seek uncomplicated certainty sends some rushing off to ashrams and crystal therapy, while many dive into the shelter of fundamentalism, and other folk yearn for better, “simpler” times. Certain popular writers urgently prescribe returning to ancient, nobler ways.
Ancient, nobler ways. It is a lovely image... and pretty much a lie. John Perlin, in his book A Forest Journey, tells how each prior culture, from tribal to pastoral to urban, wreaked calamities upon its own people and environment. I have been to Easter Island and seen the desert its native peoples wrought there. The greater harm we do today is due to our vast power and numbers, not something intrinsically vile about modern humankind.
Technology produces more food and comfort and lets fewer babies die. “Returning to older ways” would restore some balance all right, but entail a holocaust of untold proportion, followed by resumption of a kind of grinding misery never experienced by those who now wistfully toss off medieval fantasies and neolithic romances. A way of life that was nasty, brutish, and nearly always catastrophic for women.
That is not to say the pastoral image doesn’t offer hope. By extolling nature and a lifestyle closer to the Earth, some writers may be helping to create the very sort of wisdom they imagine to have existed in the past. Someday, truly idyllic pastoral cultures may be deliberately designed with the goal of providing placid and just happiness for all, while retaining enough technology to keep existence decent.
But to get there the path lies forward, not by diving into a dark, dank, miserable past. There is but one path to the gracious, ecologically sound, serene pastoralism sought by so many. That route passes, ironically, through successful consummation of this, our first and last chance, our scientific age.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Afterword (p. 563)
Glory Season (1993)

“He was, after all, a diplomat, and understood that the best and firmest deals are based on open self-interest.”

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David Brin livre The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 82 (p. 525)

“The same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.”

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David Brin livre The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 10 (p. 66)

“Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach.”

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David Brin livre Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 49 (p. 261)

“Petals floating by, Drift through my woman’s hand, As she remembers me.”

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David Brin livre Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 103 (p. 418)

“Nation states are archaic leftovers from when each man feared the tribe over the hill, an attitude we can’t afford anymore.”

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David Brin livre Earth

Part X (p. 539)
Earth (1990)

“A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.”

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David Brin livre The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 35 (p. 221)

“One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks…who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.”

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David Brin livre Earth

Part VI (p. 311)
Earth (1990)

“I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.”

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David Brin

Interview http://www.locusmag.com/1997/Issues/03/Brin.html in Locus (March 1997)

“Maia lifted her gaze to watch low clouds briefly occult a brightly speckled, placid sea, its green shoals aflicker with silver schools of fish and the flapping shadows of hovering swoop-birds. The variegated colors were lush, voluptuous. Mixing with scents carried by the moist, heavy wind, they made a stew for the senses, spiced with fecund exudates of life.
The beauty was heavy-handed, adamantly consoling. She got the point—that life goes on.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 80)

“We are programmed to find sex pleasurable for one simple reason—because animals who mate have offspring. Those who do not mate have none. Traits that result in successful reproduction get reinforced and passed on. Evolution is that simple.
It is therefore useless to bemoan as evil the fact that men tend toward aggression. Among our ancestors, aggression often helped males have more offspring than their competitors. “Good” and “evil” had little to do with it.
That is, until we reached consciousness, at which point, good and evil became pertinent indeed! Behaviors which might be excusable in dumb beasts can seem perverted, criminal, when performed by thinking beings. Just because a trait is “natural” does not oblige us to keep it.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 7 (pp. 105-106)
Glory Season (1993)

“As in elections, the law pretended universal rights, while securing the interests of powerful houses.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 553)

“In the end, both extremes had more in common with each other than either did with the middle.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 24 (p. 470)

“It could be worse. I can’t think how right now, but I’m sure it could be worse.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 4 (p. 74)

“You don’t have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!”

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David Brin livre Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 46 (p. 238)

“History and geology show what an eyeblink it’s been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.”

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David Brin livre Earth

Afterword (p. 656)
Earth (1990)

“A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.”

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David Brin livre Earth

Part I (p. 40)
Earth (1990)

“They accepted warriors…” he emphasized, “…That divinely mad type that’s so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it’s not.”

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David Brin livre The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 18 (p. 298)

“Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next. Take our modern attitude toward war. Most anthropologists now think this activity was based originally on theft and rape—perhaps rewarding enterprises for some caveman or Viking, but no longer either sexy or profitable in the context of nuclear holocaust! Today, we look back on large-scale warfare as an essentially silly enterprise.”

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David Brin livre Earth

Part I (p. 48)
Earth (1990)

“We can’t save the world without food. Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.”

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David Brin livre Earth

Part II (p. 72)
Earth (1990)

“He wasn’t afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.”

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David Brin livre Startide Rising

Source: Startide Rising (1983), Chapter 51 (p. 269)

“Wisdom. No match for the troublemaker Curiosity.”

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David Brin livre Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 16 (p. 265)

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