Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“An enemy, in Karhide, is not a stranger, an invader. The stranger who comes unknown is a guest. Your enemy is your neighbor.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Idealurile se aseamană cu stelele: nu poţi ajunge la ele, în schimb te poţi orienta.”
― Adrian Alui Gheorghe, Urma

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Era puțin forțat, la sanatoriu nu prea conta productivitatea, probabil că mesajul era pentru atunci când pacienții se vor întoarce la muncă. Și așa era, cantitatea trebuia să fie o nouă calitate a productivității în societate. Așa spusese Președintele. Că acolo unde produci mult ai și de unde alege, că or mai fi rebuturi, dar tot nimerești și lucruri de calitate.”
― Adrian Alui Gheorghe

“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“There was no sign in the face of any intermediate stages in the aging process, no hint of the man of thirty or forty or fifty who had been left behind. Only adolescence and the age of sixty were represented. It was as though a seventeen-year-old had been withered and bleached by a blast of heat.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“It was through this viewer that he got his first reply from Tralfamadore. The reply was written on Earth in huge stones on a plain in what is now England. The ruins of the reply still stand, and are known as Stonehenge. The meaning of Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above, is: "Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed."

Stonehenge wasn't the only message old Salo had received.

There had been four others, all of them written on Earth.

The Great Wall of China means in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above: "Be patient. We haven't forgotten about you."

The Golden House of the Roman Emperor Nero meant: "We are doing the best we can."

The meaning of the Moscow Kremlin when it was first walled was: "You will be on your way before you know it."

The meaning of the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, is: "Pack up your things and be ready to leave on short notice.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right.
The one lesson that emerges is the need to keep trying. No miracles. No perfection. No millennium. No apocalypse. We must cultivate a skeptical faith, avoid dogma, listen and watch well, try to clarify and define ends, the better to choose means.”
― David S. Landes

“Hide’ isn’t a word we like to use," Cassaway said. "‘Perform alternative tasks’ is the preferred term.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“His progress was more lateral than forward.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“When I was twelve, my appendix burst, and as they were wheeling my ass into the operating room, I asked the doctor, “How will this affect my piano playing?” and he said, “Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to play the piano,” and I said, “Wow! I wasn’t able to before!” And then they gassed me.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“Epoca maselor este de asemenea era omului izolat. Nu este deloc imposibil sa ii urmeze intr-o zi era manastirilor, a comunitatilor si a ordinelor.”
― Jean-Marie Domenach

“Intr-o faimoasa previziune, A. Huxley a ironizat spiritele prefabricate: de la nasterea sa, copilul este conditionat prin difuzoare care ating subconstientul sau, apoi de scoala si societate care il orienteaza infailibil spre sertarul care ii este destinat. El a propovaduit educatia contra propagandei: formarea spiritelor inzestrate cu putere de alegere, a oamenilor constienti si responsabili.”
― Jean-Marie Domenach, La propagande politique

“The obvious thing to say of his appearance was that he would have been extremely handsome if he had not been entirely bald. But, indeed, that would itself be a rather bald way of putting it. Fantastic as it sounds, it would fit the case better to say that people would have been surprised to see hair growing on him; as surprised as if they had found hair growing on the bust of a Roman emperor.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The author of the book, one Agnes Nutter, was not surprised by this, but then, it would have taken an awful lot to surprise Agnes Nutter.

Anyway, she had not written it for the sales, or the royalties, or even for the fame. She had written it for the single gratis copy of the book that an author was entitled to.”
― Terry Pratchett

“She was in the middle of a city [Nominally a city. It was the size of an English county town, or, translated into American terms, a shopping mall.] at the time.”
― Terry Pratchett

“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter.”
― Mark Twain

“They all nodded. A favorite game in quarry had been based on a highly successful film series with lasers, robots, and a princess who wore her hair like a pair of stereo headphones. (It had been agreed without a word being said that if anyone was going to play the part of any stupid princesses, it wasn't going to be Pepper.) But the game normally ended in a fight to be the one who was allowed to to wear the coal scuttle and blow up planets.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“I NEVER WENT AWAY, he said, and his voice was a dark echo from the night places, a cold slab of sound, gray, and dead. If that voice was a stone it would have had words chiseled on it a long time ago: a name, and two dates.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Henry tipped his head back, flared his nostrils, and sniffed gently — he had a memory, both clear and absurd, of being in Maurice's a month ago with his ex-wife, smelling the wine the sommelier had just poured, seeing Rhonda there across the table and thinking: 'We sniff the wine, dogs sniff each other's assholes, and it all comes to about the same.”
― Stephen King, Dreamcatcher

“The guy was tall, and possessed one of those earnest faces Henry associated with middle management.”
― Stephen King, Dreamcatcher

“Then you're seventy-five, friends are dead, and you've replaced at least one major organ: you have to pee four times a night, and you can't go up a flight a stairs without being little winded -- and your're told you're in pretty good shape for your age.

[....], in a decade you'll be eighty-five, and the only difference between you and a raisin will be that while you're both wrinkled and without a prostate, the raisin never had a prostate to begin with.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“You just know this is going to be bad," Susan said.

"—but when I went to college," Harry continued, throwing a piece of bread at Susan, "if your roommate died, you were usually allowed to skip your finals for that semester. You know, because of the trauma."

"And oddly enough, your roommate got to skip them, too," Susan said. "For much the same reason.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“Many BrainPal users find it useful to give their BrainPal a name other than BrainPal. Would you like to name your BrainPal at this time?
"Yes," I said.
Please speak the name you would like to give your BrainPal.
"Asshole," I said.
You have selected "Asshole," the BrainPal wrote, and to its credit it spelled the word correctly. Be aware that many recruits have selected this name for their BrainPal. Would you like to chose a different name?
"No," I said, and was proud that so many of my fellow recruits also felt this way about their BrainPal.
Your BrainPal is now Asshole, the BrainPal wrote. You may change this name in the future if you like. Now you must choose an access phrase to activate Asshole. While Asshole is active at all times it will only respond to commands after it has been activated. Please choose a short phrase. Asshole suggests "Activate Asshole" but you may choose another phrase. Please say your activation phrase now.
"Hey, Asshole," I said.
You have choosen "Hey, Asshole." Please say it again to confirm. I did. Then it asked me to choose a deactivation phrase. I chose (of course) "Go away, Asshole."
Would you like Asshole to refer to itself in the first person?
"Absolutely." I said.
I am Asshole.
"Of course you are.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“I glared at the man. "You know, Dr. Russell, most doctors would have found a more tactful way to break the news."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Perry," Dr. Russell said. "I don't want to seem unconcerned. But it's really not a problem. Even on Earth, testicular cancer is easily treatable, particularly in the early stages, which is the case here. At the very worst, you'd lose the testicle, but that's not a significant setback."

"Unless you happen to own the testicle," I growled.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“When people come to understand how big the Universe is and how short a human life is, their hearts cry out. Sometimes it's a shout of joy. But for most of us it's a cry of terror. The terror of extinction, the terror of meaninglessness. Our hearts cry out. Maybe to God, or maybe just to break the silence".”
― Robert Charles Wilson

“You killed a sentry, you know that?"

"I guessed I had...What do they expect if they mount such a damn stupid operation? Why didn't they pull us both in at once? Why put all the lights out? If anything was over organized, that was."

"I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over organize. Abroad that passes for efficiency.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

“I was about to speak when the maître d’hôtel advanced on our table. He showed me the wine label, all smiles as if showing me a photo of his only son. I nodded. He unscrewed the cork with a pleasant pop, then poured out a small mouthful in my glass. It tasted like the price of the entire dinner.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“There are various reasons why an individual might habitually consume large quantities of alcohol, but they all effectively boil down to the same thing. Five years ago, my business partner was a happy drunk. Three years later, he had become a moody drunk. And by the last summer, he was fumbling at the knob of the door to alcoholism. As with most habitual drinkers, he was nice-enough, regular-if-not-exactly-sharp kind of guy. He thought so too. That's why he drank. Because it seemed that with alcohol in his syste, he could more fully embody this idea of being that kind of guy.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“He was vaguely aware that he drank to forget. What made it rather pointless was that he couldn’t remember what it was he was forgetting anymore. In the end he just drank to forget about drinking.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!