The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)

by Liu Cixin

You must know that a person’s ability to discern the truth is directly proportional to his knowledge.”

I don’t want to be a spy. I just want to prove you’re an idiot!”

The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked. But the farther you looked, the more mysterious it became.

The universe is a hollow sphere floating in the middle of a sea of fire. There are numerous tiny holes in the surface of the sphere, as well as a large one. The light from the sea of flames shines through these holes. The tiny ones are stars, and the large one is the sun.”

By the time you’re my age, you’ll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”

“The police are worthless. Even if God were here, it wouldn’t do any good. The entire human race has reached the point where no one is listening to their prayers.”

Right now, species on Earth are going extinct far faster than during the late Cretaceous. Now is truly the age of mass extinctions!

Saving a species of bird or insect is no different from saving humankind. ‘All lives are equal’ is the basic tenet of Pan-Species Communism.”

Everywhere, people are the same.”

Civilization continues to follow its path of destruction of all life on Earth except humans.

The Adventists would like to destroy the human race by means of an alien power; the Redemptionists worship the alien civilization as a god; the Survivors wish to betray other humans to buy their own survival. None of these is in line with your original ideal of using the alien civilization as a way to reform humanity. YE: I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.

We should learn to be as philosophical as Wei Cheng and Shi Qiang. Just do the best within your responsibility. Let’s go drinking and then go back to sleep like good bugs.”