Quotes from book

Earth

“Prison for the crime of puberty—that was how secondary school had seemed, when he really thought back on it.”

“It had been different during his first year of graduate school, when he temporarily forsook physics to explore instead the realm of the senses. Applying logic to the late-blooming quandries of maturity, he had parsed the elements of encounter, banter, negotiation, and consummation, separating and solving the variables one by one until the problem—if not generally solved—did appear to have tractable special solutions.”

“There’s no urgency, a third voice urged, pleading compromise. No duty calls. Hold onto the illusion a little longer.
So she tried to go on pretending. After all, can’t believing sometimes make dreams come true?
No, it can’t. Besides, you're awake now.”

“Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain reaction.”

“From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“It was a queer, disturbing instant of recognition. We all create monsters in our minds. The only important difference may be which of us let our monsters become real.”

“Beware of assumptions that seem “obvious” in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.”

“Of course, sometimes a species’ invention only benefited itself. Goats developed an ability to eat almost anything, right down to the roots. Goats proliferated. Deserts spread behind them.
Then another creature appeared, one whose originality was unprecedented. Its numbers grew. And in its wake some other types did flourish. The common cat and dog. The rat. Starlings and pigeons. And the cockroach. Meanwhile, opportunity grew sparse for those less able to share the vast new riches—huge expanses of plowed fields and mowed lawns, streets and parking lots…
The coming of the grasses had left its mark indelibly on the history of the world.
So would the Age of Asphalt and Concrete.”

“The man talked, but somehow nothing he said seemed to make any sense.”

“Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.”

“They saw the end coming, he thought, looking down the file of awful figures. But they were dead wrong about the reasons why. They assumed only gods had the power to wreak such havoc on their world, but people caused the devastation here.
Alex felt compassion for the ancient Pasquans—but a superior sort nevertheless. In blaming gods, they had conveniently diverted censure from the real culprit. The designer of weapons. The feller of trees. The destroyer. Man himself.”