111 quotes
Since 1970 or thereabouts going to space has not been part of our national agenda.
NASA has kept complete control over space. But since 1970 NASA has produced paper, not spaceships.
Time (1999)
The law is a weapon of government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
Space (2000)
Anyhow, that’s our story. And I think, in my glimpses of the great encompassing mechanism that has shaped us all, I’ve seen a little of the numinous. That’s enough of God for me.
Evolution (2002)
Life, Cassiopeia said, was emergent everywhere. Planets were the crucible. Life curdled, took hold, evolved, in every nook and cranny it could find in the great nursery that was the Galaxy.
Space (2000)
Emma trying to figure that for herself. But, like most probability problems, the answer was counterintuitive.
Time (1999)
The main reason to exercise, he thought: It stops your brain working, lets your body remind you you’re still an animal. It was the only respite he got from being himself.
Origin (2001)
In the Vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box.
Ah, Mardina. Evidently you entirely lack imagination. You’ll go far in the Navy.
Ultima (2014)
But even if it is true, even if we are governed by the legacy of an animal past, then it is up to us to behave as if it were not so.
Evolution (2002)
Empty. Barren. These were the true conditions of the Universe, she thought; life, and variety, and energy, were isolated aberrations.
Ring (1994)
Like all the works of man, I saw, even these great structures were transient chimeras, destined to impermanence compared to the chthonian patience of the land.
The Time Ships (1995)
Let me face bare-handed a dozen highly trained and fully armed gladiators, each with a personal grudge against me, than a lawyer with a single pointed question.
Ultima (2014)
It was always the same with engineers, Stef had observed; nothing made them happier than to be given a well-defined and achievable task, and to be left alone to get on with it.
Proxima (2013)
With his eland meat Brow was able to reinforce his political position among the men—and buy access to the women, which was ultimately the only purpose of his endless battle for dominance.
Evolution (2002)
I’ve made myself a rich man. You shouldn’t assume that makes me a fool.
Vacuum Diagrams (1997)
There was no cognition he realized. There was only perception.
Vacuum Diagrams (1997)
There were other ways for primates to live, other kinds of societies that could be imagined. But once the pattern had been set, it was all but impossible to break.
Evolution (2002)
He dug into the ground until he came up with a stone the size of his thumbnail. “—if the universe was the size of this rock, then each star would be the size of a quark.”
Space (2000)
“You aren’t doing much for morale, Sidewise.”
Sidewise shot back, “And what about my morale? It does me no damn good to ignore what’s blindingly obvious all around us.”
Evolution (2002)
In this marginal land accurate information was at a premium; to know the land was to prosper, not to know it meant starvation, and experts were a lot more valuable than bosses.
Evolution (2002)