Adam Roberts quotes

The situation on, on earth is complicated. (Adam Roberts)
The motives that explained human murder bunched, historically, into three groups: material gain; personal grudge and sociopathy. View quote
Adam Roberts
Have you never seen human beings acting in a mob-frenzy? Have you never seen a religious rite that tipped people over the edge? Did you not see footage of the rock-and-roll music concerts they have in America? View quote
Adam Roberts
I avoid all political complications,” said Cloche, with a severe expression. "Of whatever stripe. I only wish that political complications would similarly avoid me, and my work. View quote
Adam Roberts
It's not right. A human being is a human being. A human being is not a toy.” "We cannot help but use the people below us as a resource, my love,” said her two MOHmies, as one. "That is what it means to be in power. Your choice is to relinquish power forever, or to accept that and use people for good.”... "If we are powerful,” sang her MOHmies, "we can make things better, but we are made unclean by the fact that we have power. If we are powerless we remain clean, but we cannot make things better. View quote
Adam Roberts
Let us not entirely abandon Occam's Razor! The possible, no matter how unlikely, is always to be preferred to the impossible, however appealing. View quote
Adam Roberts
By all means let us consult your needs! So long as they overlap precisely with my needs, I'm sure we can accommodate them. View quote
Adam Roberts
Billiard-Fannon's expression hardened. "Say the words,” he ordered. "Say them, or displease me. You do not wish to see the displeasure of the Holy One!” "I do not wish to see the Holy One at all,” said Jhutti. View quote
Adam Roberts
Are we in a dream?” Lebret asked. "Might we actually be dead and in some afterlife?” "How could we test either supposition?” the scientist asked, with characteristic practical-mindedness. "What conceivable experiment could we design to falsify such a claim? View quote
Adam Roberts
I shouldn't be naive” Diana said. "Of course, realising its destructive power only makes them want it more. Of course. Even more than great wealth, power craves technologies of destruction. Good to be wealthy, but better to remain in power-and the more awe-inspiring the weaponry at your disposal, the better able you are to do that. View quote
Adam Roberts
It had to be one or the other. Did it have to be one or the other? Even the question as to whether it had to be one or the other had to be one or the other! (Adam Roberts)
Individually speaking, death is always a rupture, a violence. But taking a total view, death is the bell curve upon which the cosmos is balanced. Without it, nothing would work, everything would collapse, clogged and stagnant. Death is flow. It is the necessary lubrication of universal motion. It is, in itself, neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy. View quote
Adam Roberts
You must register your disagreement, must you Monsieur?” he said, in a level voice. "Consider it registered. Consider it simultaneously disregarded. View quote
Adam Roberts
As far as dreams were concerned-well dreams are generated by the random processes of neural oscillation during the brain's rest phases. What dreams do is cycle and recycle images and feelings, rationalisations and fears. There's nothing special about that. It's not the dreams that matter (chaff, mental turbulence, the rotating metal bars moving endlessly through the transparent tub of metaphorical slushy). It is what the problem-solving circuits in the mind make of the dreams. Dreams iterate and test mental schemas, discarding the maladaptive to return the adaptive to the slush to be reworked. Dreams are emotional preparations for solving problems-that is why we have evolved them, because problem-solving abilities are highly adaptive and thus strongly evolutionarily selected. Dreams intoxicate the individual out of reliance on common sense and preconception, and tempt her into the orbit of private logic. Dreams have utility. View quote
Adam Roberts
So it ends As it begins. Off we climb And no one wins. View quote
Adam Roberts
Do you know what this is? "The floor, Miss?” "Dust! I read about it-tiny particles of matter. View quote
Adam Roberts
His last hours alive. But he didn't know! None of us will know, of course. The weird grammar of death. You die, he or she dies, they die, but there is no genuine form for "I”. Not really. All know that, none know when. View quote
Adam Roberts
That a human being had died did not distress her. Had it been somebody she knew it would have upset her; she wasn't a monster. Had it been somebody she cared about. But it was nobody she knew, and it would have been disingenuous to pretend that the death of somebody she didn't know affected her on an emotional level. View quote
Adam Roberts
Diana got that seventh-sense intimation that she had touched on an unmentionable matter; although a strangely involuted one whereby the fact that it was unmentionable was itself unmentionable. View quote
Adam Roberts
Come out,” Sukarno cried into the vegetation. "I have a gun!” "Mr. Sukarno,” said Iago, without looking at him. "You are, if you don't mind me saying, too fond of shouting ‘I have a gun.' View quote
Adam Roberts
But once we are free...once we have evolved beyond the old medieval power structures and the medieval internecine violence they create, then we'll be able to use the technology responsibly. Everything depends on that. (Adam Roberts)
One of the curiosities of anger, of course, is that the more you focus it outward, firing it at the injustices of the world, the more it actually parses your own self-pity and resentment. View quote
Adam Roberts
People-problems did not interest her. Data seemed to her a larger, purer, more transcendent quantity than Homo sapiensness. Human-to-human interactions were, effectively, all just politics, and politics bored her. View quote
Adam Roberts
You must register your disagreement, must you Monsieur? View quote
Adam Roberts
It's not right. A human being is a human being. A human being is not a toy. View quote
Adam Roberts