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Many people were bitterly puzzled that the first truly intelligent aliens to be found should be so immediately, unremittingly hostile, but the astronomers shrugged it off. The universe was at best a marginal place for life.

— Paul J. McAuley Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

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More quotes by Paul J. McAuley

You can’t hate change. It’s like hating life.

Elves of Antarctica (2016)

We wish not to be alone in the universe, Dorthy, and this drives people to invent things that are not really there.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Stay the same and after a while you come to think that nothing will ever change.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

“We must remember that they are alien.”
“That’s hardly a basis for speculation now. It explains everything and nothing.”

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Things are simply what they are, neither good nor bad. The potential for evil is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

All Paul J. McAuley quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Paul J. McAuley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.