16 quotes
It is very clear that nothing in nature presents such a danger to the human race is our own actions.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
Everyone agreed what an interesting concept it was—the sort of thing that ought to be true, in an interesting world.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
The possible future is not just longer than the past. It is unimaginably longer.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
There was one good argument against cloning, and only one. It increased the total number of people, and to me that number already felt far too large.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
I worry when I hear talk of “this many millions” and “that many billions” from officials who I know have trouble calculating a restaurant tip.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
Everyone was somebody’s cousin, or uncle, or bedmate, or best college friend. Sometimes he felt that the whole of Washington was glued together into one vast, incestuous, and inefficient snotball.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
When you pay somebody off, it only increases their demands. I know, only too well. They are never satisfied with what they get.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
As the poet laureate of all confidence tricksters and treasure-seekers puts it, we were “given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie.”
Dancing with Myself (1993)
Luck is infatuated with the efficient.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
“Any great thoughts?”…
“The younger generation are clearly unfitted to run the world, but one day they are going to do it anyway.”
Dancing with Myself (1993)
I sometimes think that the only thing in life that I find truly irresistible is the challenge to finagle something that everyone else says can’t be done.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
There is nothing more alien to a modern American than yesterday’s empires, with their arbitrary imperial powers, their cruelty, and their casual control over life and death.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
Humans harnessed a negligible fraction of tidal energy, although the available energy is huge. Other species do rather better, and the intertidal zones are the most biologically productive regions of the world, more so than even the tropical rainforests.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
The superior strain of peas is the one whose genetic composition allows it to adapt to whatever environment it is presented with. People are not peas, but in one respect they are not very different from them: some have superior genetic composition to others.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
Unfair to other students? Probably. I was not going to worry about that. Show me a totally impartial teacher, and I’ll show you a robot.
Dancing with Myself (1993)
Not one word of what I’d said had got through to him. It didn’t much matter, I’d really been speaking for the media anyway, but it was a shame to see bigotry masquerading as public-spirited behavior.
Dancing with Myself (1993)