Arkady shook his head vehemently, causing him to spin a little in the air over the table. “No, no, no, no! History is not evolution! It is a false analogy! Evolution is a matter of environment and chance, acting over millions of years. But history is a matter of environment and choice, acting within lifetimes, and sometimes within years, or months, or days! History is Lamarckian! So that if we choose to establish certain institutions on Mars, there they will be! And if we choose others, there they will be!”
Source: Red Mars (1992), Chapter 2, “The Voyage Out” (p. 88)
Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 348
“If we found life on Mars, it would change everybody's view of our place in space.”
[NewsBank, Mike Anton, Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington, Fully loaded robot heading off to Mars, November 20, 2011]
Playboy interview (1973)
Context: I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream. … Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia. That's what I want for me.
Source: Mars and its Canals (1906), Chapter XXXII, Conclusion
"You ask the questions", The Independent, 17 June 2004, p. 7.
Asked "Admit it: you want to become prime minister, don't you?" by Amanda Findlay of Bolton.
2000s, 2004
Playboy interview (May 1995)
Context: My point is that you cannot force social change at a speed that it cannot go. Social change is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Deep social change takes time. And slowly the culture is changing. The MTV generation is far more tolerant, and that tolerance is growing.
Global Warming on Mars? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2006/12/20/global-warming-on-mars/, wattsupwiththat.com, December 20, 2006.
2006
