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Quotes from Burning Paradise — Robert Charles Wilson

born 1953 Canada

← All quotes by Robert Charles Wilson

9 quotes

The only reason you can’t see how crazy this is is because we’ve been neck-deep in crazy for years.

Burning Paradise (2013)

“So are they some form of life, or are they machines?”
“At the chemical level all living things can be construed as machines.”

Burning Paradise (2013)

Violence is the great attractor of human history, Dr. Iverson. A force almost as irresistible as gravity.

Burning Paradise (2013)

“So we can trust each other.”
“It’s the rest of the world we can’t be sure about.”

Burning Paradise (2013)

Ris, it can’t tell the truth—it can’t distinguish between truth and lies. You know that. It uses words to manipulate people.

Burning Paradise (2013)

“What are you saying, you think he’s completely sane?”
“No. But I’m not sure any of us rises to that standard.”

Burning Paradise (2013)

There was no mind in back of those words, Ethan reminded himself. Nothing but a series of highly-evolved algorithms aimed as achieving a strategic result. Engaging in dialogue with such a creature was no more useful than trying to fend off a scorpion by quoting Voltaire.

Burning Paradise (2013)

And the hypercolony would lie. More precisely, it would say whatever advanced its interests. The distinction between truth and falsehood was irrelevant to the hypercolony, perhaps even imperceptible to it. It generated human language solely for the purpose of manipulating human behavior.

Burning Paradise (2013)

All the pious high-school bullshit about the Century of Peace had been revealed for what it was: as artificial as a plastic nativity scene and as hollow as a split piñata. The world was peaceful the way a drunken coed passed out at a frat party was peaceful: it was the peace that facilitated the fucking.

Burning Paradise (2013)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Charles Wilson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.