Variable Star Quotes

“Well, some men learn by listening, some read, some observe and analyze — and some of us just have to pee on the electric fence.”
― Spider Robinson, Variable Star

“Mankind is divided into two basic sorts: those who find the unknown future threatening ... and those who find it thrilling. The rupture between those two sides has been responsible for most of the bloodshed in history.”
― Spider Robinson, Variable Star

“I had not until then fully realized that I was odd, that there was anything strange about growing up with a single-parent genius. I thought all homes had equations scrawled with disc-marker across all the cabinets and walls, and clean laundry in the freezer, and defrosting chicken in the tool drawer. I thought everyone read a book a day and listened to hours of ancient music.”
― Spider Robinson, Variable Star

“anger is always fear in disguise”
― Spider Robinson, Variable Star

“When there’s nothing else you can do, breathe slower. There’s no way it can hurt, and it might help.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“We need to have as many baskets for our eggs as possible. Even if we don’t manage to ruin this planet ourselves, natural disasters or changes—or even changes in our star—could make it impossible to live on this planet. —Philosopher Anson MacDonald, radio interview, Butler, MO, USA, Terra, July 7, 1987 (“Anson MacDonald Day”)”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“My opinions as to the future of Mankind are hedged in by this statement: I think it is necessary for the human race to establish colonies off this planet. —Admiral Caleb Saunders, interview, Butler, MO, USA, Terra July 7, 1987 (“Anson MacDonald Day”) You know the date. Everyone does. Everyone always will. If we’re lucky.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“They strap toast onto a cat’s back and toss it in the air.” And he waited. I knew there had to be a gag, and if I didn’t guess what it was, he would win the exchange I had begun by essaying a pun. Well, it served me right. “But how do dat make de ship go, Mr. Interlocutor,” I asked ritually, conceding defeat. “They butter the toast, you see.” Light belatedly dawned. “Ah. Of course. The toast must fall butter side down—” “—but the cat must land on its feet.” He spread his hands: QED. “Hence the array spins forever, generating power.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“If change threatens you, you become conservative in self-defense. If it thrills you, you become liberal in self-liberation. He says the Threateneds are frequently more successful in the short run, because they always fight dirty. But in the long run, they always lose, because Thrilled people learn and thus accomplish more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“What distinguishes Buddhism from any other faith I’ve studied—from most human beings, really—is that the people who face the wall and the people who face away from it have never fought a war over it. They’re never going to agree…but they feel no need to. Buddha himself is supposed to have said, “People with opinions just go around bothering each other.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“The moment I put it on, that suit became an old, familiar, and valued friend—and I became taller and wider across the shoulders. It could not have fit better if it had been made on my body. It knew things about me I wouldn’t learn for years yet, and approved of them all.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“I really really really hate this,” Pat told him. “Exactly our problem. Hate does not add clarity.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“his slot was given by his lifemate Perry Jarnell, who took six minutes. At that point his audio and video both cut out. After that, even the most pompous speakers quickly figured out that if they hadn’t gotten it said within five minutes, Merril wasn’t going to let them keep trying.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“They made solemn pronouncements about conditions a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, on the basis of computer models, which they had produced with computers not even bright enough to talk, let alone understand speech. They were unlike all the generations before theirs in several ways, but chiefly in that they had no faintest clue how ignorant they were. Previous ages had usually had a pretty good handle on that.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“They somehow managed to persuade themselves that computer models constitute data. That very complicated guesses become facts. They made themselves believe they had the power to accurately model, not merely something as inconceivably complex as, say, a single zygote…but a national economy, a weather system, a planetary ecosphere, a multiplanet society—even a universe.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“Over and over like a recurring flu they developed the imbecile idea that they understood nearly everything, in all but the finest details. They had no slightest idea what lightning was, how it worked. They had absolutely no clue how moisture got farther than about ten meters up a tree—the highest that capillary action can push it. Fifty years after the splitting of the atom, they accidentally noticed for the first time that hurricanes emit gamma rays. There were quite a few large, significant phenomena they could ‘explain,’ often elegantly…over and over again…and had to, because the explanations kept falling apart at the first hard-data-push. Things like the Tunguska Event, gamma ray bursts, why an airplane wing generated lift, what ninety percent of our DNA was doing there…yet they were solemnly convinced they basically understood the universe, except for some details out in the tenth decimal place.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“Webb? Wrote a book listing forty-nine possible solutions to Fermi’s Paradox—and demolished them one by one, leaving only the fiftieth solution, namely: we’re alone?” He looked as if he’d chased his lemon with milk. “Webb was an idiot. His analysis presumed that if other life did exist, it could not be more intelligent than him. It was the characteristic flaw of the entire PreCollapse millennium: the assumption of vastly more knowledge than they actually possessed.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“I conclude you must be a natural horses's ass.”
― Spider Robinson, Variable Star

“I postponed the matter until after coffee. By the end of the first cup, I had no strong objection to anything short of disembowelment or denial of a second cup. If you are ever given the choice, insist on the peaberry. Trust me.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star: A Novel

“Am I finally addressing a sentient being?”
― Spider Robinson, Variable Star