Sf Quotes

“It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Terminal World

“I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don't accidentally walk through into another dimension.”
― Steven Wright

“Now any dogma, based primarily on faith and emotionalism, is a dangerous weapon to use on others, since it is almost impossible to guarantee that the weapon will never be turned on the user.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I'm glad it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different for each of us, and a reflection of our personalities. Each of us noticed the details that caught our attention and remembered what was important to us, and the narratives we built shaped our personalities in turn. But, I wondered, if everyone remembered everything, would our differences get shaved away? What would happen to our sense of self? It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn’t be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film. ·”
― Ted Chiang, The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling

“Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.”
― Ted Chiang

“Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity,”
― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“None of us are saints, but we can all try to be better. Each time you do something generous, you're shaping yourself into someone who's more likely to be generous next time, and that matters.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Some guys step on a rake in the dark, and get mad and go punch somebody. Others step on a rake in the dark and fall down laughing at themselves. I know which kind of guy I'd rather be. So do my friends.”
― Spider Robinson, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

“[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!”
― Terry Pratchett

“Step up to red alert."
Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb."
- Rimmer & Kryten, "Red Dwarf”
― Rob Grant; Grant Naylor

“My message to you is this: Pretend that you have free will. It’s essential that you behave as if your decisions matter, even though you know they don’t. The reality isn’t important; what’s important is your belief, and believing the lie is the only way to avoid a waking coma. Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has.

(story: What's Expected of Us)”
― Ted Chiang, What's Expected of Us

“The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“Passing in any crowd are secret people whose hidden response to beauty is the desire to tear it into bleeding meat.”
― James Tiptree Jr.

“He turns off the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“We like the idea that there's always someone responsible for any given event, because it helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there's someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone's control.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.”
― Kage Baker

“As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant: writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate.”
― Ted Chiang, The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling

“Low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we aim high, we’ll get better results.”
― Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects

“Some humans theorize that intelligent species go extinct before they can expand into outer space. If they're correct, then the hush of the night sky is the silence of the graveyard.”
― Ted Chiang, The Great Silence

“Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully.”
― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“Sex isn’t what makes a relationship real; the willingness to expend effort maintaining it is.”
― Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects

“The difference is that the heat energy we radiate is a high-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s disordered. The chemical energy we absorb is a low-entropy form of energy, meaning it’s ordered. In effect, we are consuming order and generating disorder; we live by increasing the disorder of the universe. It’s only because the universe started in a highly ordered state that we are able to exist at all.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“If you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can't assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.”
― Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects

“When we speak, we use the breath in our lungs to give our thoughts a physical form. The sounds we make are simultaneously our intentions and our life force.”
― Ted Chiang, The Great Silence

“In most cases we have to forget a little bit before we can forgive; when we no longer experience the pain as fresh, the insult is easier to forgive, which in turn makes it less memorable, and so on. It’s this psychological feedback loop that makes initially infuriating offenses seem pardonable in the mirror of hindsight.”
― Ted Chiang, The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling

“Every decision you make contributes to your character and shapes the kind of person you are.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom