71 quotes
Religion and ethics were not always—or even frequently—mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often reflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice.
The Fall of Hyperion (1990)
Each of them was intimately aware of the procedure for electing a pope—not only of the antiquated mechanisms, of course, but of the politicking, pressuring, deal-making, bluffing, and outright blackmail that had often accompanied the process over the centuries.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
“War does not call for judgment,” I said, “merely survival.”
The Fall of Hyperion (1990)
“The Core knows what Teilhard de Chardin and other sentimentalists refused to acknowledge: evolution is not progress, that there is no ‘goal’ or direction to evolution. Evolution is change. Evolution ‘succeeds’ if that change best adapts some leaf or branch of its tree of life to conditions of the universe.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
I realized then what I had known since I was a child watching my mother die of cancer—namely, that beyond ideology and ambition, beyond thought and emotion, there was only pain. And salvation from it.”
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
The place was part museum, part library, and part archive; I loved it at first sight...and smell, for here there were thousands of printed books, many very old indeed, and nothing smells quite as wonderful as old books.
The Fall of Hyperion (1990)
There are no ghosts, my love. Death is final. The soul is that ineffable combination of memory and personality which we carry through life...when life departs, the soul also dies. Except for what we leave in the memory of those who loved us.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
“Almost everything interesting in the human experience is the result of an individual experiencing, experimenting, explaining, and sharing,” said my young friend. “A hive mind would be the ancient television broadcasts, or life at the height of the datasphere...consensual idiocy.”
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
“And the sad fact is that all nanotech life out of our control—out of anyone’s control. The essence of nanotech life’s evolution is autonomy, self-will, and goals which have nothing to do with those of the harboring life form.”
“Humanity, you mean,” said Lourdusamy.
“Precisely.”
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
I realized that for this moment, nothing in the past mattered. Nothing terrible in the future mattered. What mattered was her skin against me, her hand holding me, the perfume of her hair and skin and the warmth of her breath against my chest. This was satori. This was truth.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
One of the men in the boat—I could not remember which character—had moved through all of the circles of theological supposition: praying, believing that God was a merciful Deity who sat up nights worrying about him, then believing that God was a cruel bastard, and finally deciding that no one was listening.
Endymion (1996)