Steve Rainwater > Steve's Quotes

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
― H.G. Wells

“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
― Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth

“Science, however, is not just a matter of making mistakes, but of making mistakes in public. Making mistakes for all to see, in the hopes of getting the others to help with the corrections.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for the rest of humankind.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“There are certain segments of society that will never lend an ear to a new idea. They squat in a certain place and will not budge from it. They will find many reasons to maintain a way of life that is comfortable to them. They’ll cling to old religions; they’ll fasten with the grip of death on ethics that were dead, without their knowing it, centuries before; they will embrace a logic that can be blown over with a breath, still claiming it is sacrosanct.”
― Clifford D. Simak, A Heritage of Stars

“The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

“I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.”
― H.G. Wells

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy

“Long live transfinite mountains, the hollow earth, time machines, fractal writing, aliens, dada, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, teleportation, artificial reality, robots, pod people, hylozoism, endless shrinking, intelligent goo, antigravity, surrealism, software highs, two-dimensional time, gnarly computation, the art of photo composition, pleasure zappers, nanomachines, mind viruses, hyperspace, monsters from the deep and, of course, always and forever, the attack of the giant ants!”
― Rudy Rucker

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.”
― Daniel Dennett

“One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“I felt convinced that however it might have been in former times, in the present stage of the world, no man's faculties could be developed, no man's moral principle be enlarged and liberal, without an extensive acquaintance with books.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man

“Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”
― Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics

“Money here on Earth is more than the paper or the metal that you use for money, more than the rows of figures that account for money. Here on Earth you have given money a symbolism such as no medium of exchange has anywhere else I have ever known or heard of. You have made it a power and a virtue and you have made the lack of it despicable and somehow even criminal. You measure men by money and you calibrate success with money and you almost worship money.”
― Clifford D. Simak, They Walked Like Men

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better.”
― John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider

“Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

“Only two kinds of people can not change their minds, my friend, the foolish and the dead.”
― Seabury Quinn, The Dark Angel

“Evere thing blippin & bleapin & movin in the shiftin uv thay Nos. Sum tyms bytin sum tyms bit.”
― Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker

“The man who will demand ten signatures upon a promissory note and look askance at you if you tell him of interplanetary distances, will swallow any idle fable, no matter how absurd, if it be boldly asserted and surrounded with sufficient nonsensical mummery and labeled as a religion.”
― Seabury Quinn, The Devil's Rosary

“Always there is something of interest to be seen if one but knows where to look for it.”
― Seabury Quinn, The Horror on the Links

“My business is to know things, especially things which I am not supposed to know.”
― Seabury Quinn, Black Moon: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume Five

“Everything is natural, though if we do not know, or if we misread nature's laws, we falsely call it otherwise. Consider: Fifty years ago a man beholding the radio would have called it supernatural, yet the laws of physics governing the device were known as well then as now. But their application had not yet been learned.”
― Seabury Quinn, The Devil's Rosary

“Me, I know the by-ways of ghostland as I know my own pocket, and I solemnly assure you there is no such thing as the supernatural. There is undoubtedly the superphysical; there is also that class of natural phenomena which we do not understand; but the supernatural? Non, it is not so.”
― Seabury Quinn, The Dark Angel