Quotes from book
Earth

Name: Earth
Author: David Brin

Earth is a 1990 science fiction novel by American writer David Brin. The book was nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1991.

“On this occasion, despite the wind and sparkling stars, they looked just like huge chunks of stone, pathetically chiseled by desperate folk to resemble stern gods. People did bizarre things when they were afraid…as most men and women had been for nearly all the time since the species evolved.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VIII (p. 480)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

Part VIII (p. 462)
Source: Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 236)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VII (p. 353)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part IX (p. 531)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

Part V (p. 250)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

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.”

David Brin book Earth

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

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

David Brin book Earth

Part X (p. 539)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VI (p. 311)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Afterword (p. 656)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 40)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 48)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

Part II (p. 72)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part III (pp. 145-146)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

Afterword (p. 661)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part II (p. 122)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

Part XI (p. 647)
Earth (1990)

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

David Brin book Earth

Part VII (p. 328)
Earth (1990)

“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.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VII (p. 366)
Earth (1990)

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