Log > Log's Quotes

“You know, I get it. Being raised as a superstar must be really, really difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you’re worth a damn off the court— yeah, sounds rough. Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time. I know it’s not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you’re physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don’t think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit. Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours up about six insults ago. So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone.”
― Nora Sakavic, The Raven King

“Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”
― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

“You'd be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse

“Perhaps my only real expertise, my only talent, is to endure beyond the endurable.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”
― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

“Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.”
― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

“I am so tired of waiting.
Aren’t you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two—
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.”
― Langston Hughes, Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings

“I was a battleground of fear and curiosity.”
― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

“You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There’s still lots of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don’t think he knows.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“You live and learn. At any rate, you live.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“So this is it," said Arthur, "We are going to die."
"Yes," said Ford, "except... no! Wait a minute!" He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's this switch?" he cried.
"What? Where?" cried Arthur, twisting round.
"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after all.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“What we want you to ask yourselves is this: what is space, to you? Is it a playground? A quarry? A flagpole? A classroom? A temple? Who do you believe should go, and for what purpose? Or should we go at all? Is the realm above the clouds immaterial to you, so long as satellites send messages and rocks don't fall? Is human spaceflight a fool's errand, a rich man's fantasy, an unacceptable waste of life and metal? Are our methods grotesque to you, our ethics untenable? Are our hopes outdates? When I tell you of our life out here, do you cheer for us, or do you scoff?
Are astronauts still relevant in your time?”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“We have found nothing you can sell. We have found nothing you can put to practical use. We have found no worlds that could be easily or ethically settled, were that end desired. We have satisfied nothing but curiosity, gained nothing but knowledge.”
― Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.”
― Charles Dickens

“If I don't have real answers, it is because we still don't know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Feed Area X but do not antagonize it, and perhaps someone will, through luck or mere repetition, hit upon some explanation, some solution, before the world becomes Area X.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation / Authority / Acceptance

“Now I keep in mind that none of us can love and be loved without the possibility of loss but that there's a difference between knowledge and terror.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“Sometimes a god comes," Selver said. "He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest

“But even the most unmissionary soul, unless he pretend he has no emotions, is sometimes faced with a choice between commission and omission. 'What are they doing?' abruptly becomes, 'What are we doing?' and then, 'What must I do?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest

“In diversity is life and where there's life there's hope, was the general sum of his creed, a modest one to be sure.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Word for World Is Forest

“If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“There are many decisions we can hand over to the machines. But I argue that only some decisions should be - even when the machines can make them better than we can. As a society, we need to start making some choices as to what we entrust to the machines.”
― Toby Walsh, It's Alive!: Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots

“There are several other reasons why Deep Learning will not provide the whole answer to the problem of building thinking machines. First, we will often want our thinking machines to explain their decisions. Deep Learning is largely a closed box. It cannot meaningfully explain why a particular input gives a certain output. If we are to trust the system, we may want it to explain some of its decisions. Second, we will often want to guarantee certain behaviours. An autonomous car must always stop at a red light. Air traffic control software can never permit two aircraft into the same sector. Deep Learning does not permit such guarantees to be made, and we will likely need more rule-based systems to do this.”
― Toby Walsh, It's Alive!: Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots