25 quotes
The human mind gets used to strangeness very quickly if it does not exhibit interesting behavior.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
If the universe has any soul, it is the soul of irony.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
“I am of no faith,” said Aenea. “If one defines faith as belief in the supernatural.”
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
Crudely effective, but wildly inefficient.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
As is always the case when you are with the actual human being behind the celebrity or legend, there is something human about the man or woman that makes things less than myth.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
Never make unsupportable assumptions about your enemies, Martin. It can be a fatal self-indulgence.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
“What?”
“Never mind. It will make sense when it comes about. All improbabilities do when probability waves collapse into event.”
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
Dogma and hierarchy are endemic to such structures...indeed, such are the structures of any theocracy.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
If there is a true secret to the universe, it is this...these first few seconds of warmth and entry and complete acceptance by one’s beloved.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
While I was obsessed with my own misery, there were other things occurring in the human universe.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
I thought—To lose all this forever?
And I hallucinated Aenea’s voice saying To lose all this forever is the essence of being human, my love.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
No lifetime is long enough for those who wish to create, Raul. Or for those who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
These were not religious fanatics, I saw, not mindless servants or self-punishing ascetics, but were, instead, row upon row of intelligent, questioning, alert young men and women.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
Twenty kilometers. At an average speed of 120 klicks per hour, we should cover the distance in ten minutes. Ten freezing, adrenaline-pumping, gorge-rising, terror-beating-against-the-ribs, react-in-a-microsecond-or-die seconds.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
I don’t think that I want to make any wager if it means dealing with a Church that has grown so corrupt that it makes obedience and submission the price of its saving the life of someone’s child.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
I could not do this, I realized, if I were immortal. This degree of love of life and of one another is granted, I saw for once and for ever, not to immortals, but to those who live briefly and always under the shadow of death and loss.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
Thus evolved some members of the Core—not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy.
The Rise of Endymion (1997)
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)
“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)