“Either you are a man of unusual ability, Thorn, or a man with a rather inadequate grasp of human nature. I just hope it’s the former.”
Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 27 (p. 495)
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Alastair Reynolds 198
British novelist and astronomer 1966Related quotes
The Desiring Machine
Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977)

In "How Little I Know", in Saturday Review (12 Nov 1966), 152. Excerpted in Buckminster Fuller and Answar Dil, Humans in Universe (1983), 31.
"The Comprehensive Man", Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (1963), 75-76.
1960s

since it is at odds with itself, and since it does not tolerate any lasting principle within itself
Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 246
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)
Source: Tools For Survival (2009), p. 150

"The Rose" (published c. 1648). Compare: "Flower of all hue, and without thorn the rose", John Milton, Paradise Lost, book iv. line 256.; "Every rose has it's thorn", Poison, "Every Rose Has Its Thorn".
Hesperides (1648)

“But he, that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.”
The Narrow Way (1848)
Context: On all her breezes borne
Earth yields no scents like those;
But he, that dares not grasp the thorn
Should never crave the rose.

Remarks at the Monogahela House (14 February 1861); as published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 209
1860s