Kim Stanley Robinson quotes - page 3

One could not overshoot a planet's carrying capacity without disaster following-that was what Earth's history since the nineteenth century existed to prove. (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Ah, never fear; death could be trusted to show up. No doubt well before she wanted it. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Immigration worked as a time machine, bringing up little islands of the past into the present. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Why were the good days always so short? Moment to moment, day by day-each so full, and oh so lovely-and then gone forever, gone before there was a chance to absorb them properly, to really live them. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
The triviality of the current scene usually put her off, but now she supposed that the politics of the moment always looked petty and stupid; only later did it take on the look of respectable statecraft, of immutable History. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Dominance hierarchies had underlain every system ever realized so far, but at the same time democratic values had been always a hope and a goal, expressed in every primate's sense of self, and resentment of hierarchies that after all had to be imposed, by force. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Only a few people in this world were lucky enough to run into their true partners-it took outrageous luck for it to happen, then the sense to recognize it, and the courage to act. Few could be expected to have all that, and then to have things go well. The rest had to make do. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Tourism is an ugly business, it's not fit work for human beings. It's hosting parasites. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
You must be very scrupulous not to gather power in to the center just because you can do it. Power corrupts, that's the basic law of politics. Maybe the only law. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
After every revolution there is an interregnum, in which communities run themselves and all is well, and then the new regime comes in and screws things up. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
People claiming that some fundamental right is foreign to their culture-that stinks no matter who says it, fundamentalists, patriarchs, Leninists, metanats, I don't care who. They aren't going to get away with it here, not if I can help it. (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Not everyone was as good at creation as they were at complaining. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Revolution suspends habit as well as law. But just as nature abhors a vacuum, people abhor anarchy. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
If enough data points trouble the theory, the theory may be wrong. If the theory is basic, the paradigm may have to change. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
You conceive of science as nothing more than answers to questions? As a system for generating answers. And what is the purpose of that? ...To know. And what will you do with your knowledge? ...Find out more. But why? I don't know. It's the way I am. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Nakedness was dangerous to the social order, she thought, because it revealed too much reality. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Anyone can agree that things should be fair, and the world just. The way to get there is always the real problem. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
When she realized what she was doing she snorted in disgust, at herself and at the pervasiveness of politics-how it could infect everything if you let it. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
Even if you want no state, or a minimal state, then you still have to argue it point by point. Especially since most minimalists want to keep exactly the economic and police system that keeps them privileged. That's libertarians for you-anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
"Art is an optimist,” Nadia said to Maya as they walked on. "Art is an idiot,” Maya replied. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
One sign of a good action is that in retrospect it appears inevitable. (Kim Stanley Robinson)
Rituals should have some unpleasantness, or you don't appreciate them properly. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
No step along the way had seemed more than a little thing; but altogether it came to something rather monstrous. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
But nothing lasts, not even stone, not even despair. View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson
In the random flux of universal contingency, nothing mattered; and yet, and yet... View quote
Kim Stanley Robinson