14 quotes
The universe aged: indifferent, harsh, hostile and ultimately lethal.
Origin (2001)
A pinch of observation is worth a mountain of hypothesis.
Origin (2001)
Superstition! A fatal flaw for a regime whose legitimacy comes entirely from religion.
Origin (2001)
One must admire efficiency when one finds it, whatever one’s moral qualms.
Origin (2001)
He walks on, across the hot crimson dust.
Origin (2001)
No wonder you can’t figure out the Fermi Paradox, Malenfant, if you don’t know your own wife’s dress size.
Origin (2001)
We must consider the possibility that the manifold of universes through which we wonder is in fact infinite.
Origin (2001)
They talked further, an incoherent conversation of disconnected fragments, peppered by misunderstanding, suffused by mistrust.
Origin (2001)
They see the universe as essentially bountiful, a generous motherland. We see the universe as an enemy nation, to be occupied and mastered.
Origin (2001)
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)
Only children chatter of an afterlife. We are nothing but transient dissipative structures. In your cherishing the bone dust of the dead you are seeking to deny the basic truth of existence: that when we die, we are gone.
Origin (2001)
When everybody else was snuggling at the drive-in, you used to lecture me on how space is a high frontier, a sky to be mined, a resource for humanity.
But is that all there is? Is the sky really nothing more than an empty stage for mankind to strut and squabble?
Origin (2001)
No organization was a rational place. Organizations were bear pits where people fought for their own projects, which might or might not have something to do with the organization’s supposed mission. The wise person accepted that, and found a way to get what she wanted in spite of it all.
Origin (2001)
A lion takes only the last deer in the herd. She does not dream of having so many cubs that the plains would be full of nothing but lions. There are simple laws. Most species figure them out; you are the exception. An ecology of a single species is not viable. A diverse, stable world would provide for you.
Origin (2001)