Ghosts Quotes

“buttttt, buttttt, butttt…”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Besides, he really didn’t want to be shaking hands with aliens while there was poop in his pants.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“All that means it’s on par with Greenland for air quality, but I don’t know what those stray particles actually are. They could be alien airborne viruses. Anything.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“What will the aliens make of two spacecraft showing up from entirely different, competing human cultures? Anxiety is a bitch, refusing to let him rest. Somehow, he drifts in and out of sleep.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“No one could ever be ready for First Contact with an unknown alien species that evolved a bazillion miles from Earth. At an intellectual level, Crash is prepared for peaceful coexistence. At an emotional level, he fears not only for his life but all of humanity.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“That’s humanity,” the professor replies. “That’s us. That’s our collective intelligence or lack thereof. Our societies are driven by convenience, and that’s exploited by greed. We call it capitalism, but it’s really consumerism. So what will they see when they look at Earth? Will they see medical researchers looking for cancer treatments, or will they see rivers of plastic polluting our waterways?”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“No, but it is a possibility. We’re chauvinistic. Even among humans, we’re obstinate and biased, mistreating others based on race or gender or wealth when there’s really no difference between us at all. When it comes to other animals, we refuse to see any other species as deserving of our rights. We even speak of human rights because no other animal qualifies for consideration. In the same way, they might see us as inferior to them.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“What the hell is everyone so damn afraid of? Yet again, Molly sees the worship of the status quo as nauseating. Change excites the young. It scares the old, but why? It’s because life is a lie. Today is the same as yesterday, only it isn’t. Yesterday is gone. Yesterday can never be revisited. Tomorrow need not be the same as today, but only if there’s the courage to change today. And to her mind, that’s what’s lacking—courage.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Whether it’s the US, China or the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, politics is a murky grey. To think otherwise is worse than folly; it’s to ignore the evil that has been done in the name of freedom over the decades. It’s hubris to think humans could control an intelligent species from another planet. Or even to consider they’d need such control.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“technobabble.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“He shouldn’t be rewarded for his behavior. That’s not fair.” “No, it isn’t. But it’s the best of a bunch of bad options, and that’s politics!”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Following the loss of the Russo-Ukraine war, the Russian Federation fractured and threatened to break apart.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Molly is the spare twenty dollar bill scrunched up at the back of her purse.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“It’s the same perverse logic that said the Space Shuttle Columbia’s already been hit by falling insulation during a dozen other launches, so a tiny bit of foam might knock off a few tiles, but the spacecraft will be fine.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Rather than calling their spacesuits, well, spacesuits, they’re wearing EVA suits or Extravehicular Activity suits. That Extravehicular is a mere one word and not two seems lost on the engineers. No one is going to simplify EVA to EA, though. That just doesn’t sound right. It seems three letters are the minimum. Their LCMUs could be called jet packs. Certainly, that’s how the public sees them, but the Lost Crew Maneuvering Unit has retained its clumsy acronym even though Crash has never heard of an LCMU actually being used to rescue a lost astronaut. They’re jet packs, but Crash learned the hard way not to use that phrase in front of the engineers. In their minds, such vulgar terms seem to lessen the technology.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“And what will these creatures from another star system make of our idiosyncrasies? Will they have some of their own? Will they see through the thin veneer of logic we use to justify our emotions? How will that affect the way they deal with us?” Crash says, “That’s Second Contact.” The professor nods, agreeing. “That’s Second Contact.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Logic evolved as a means of defending our passions in an argument. Most people reason to defend their position, not to change their minds or advance their understanding. “When it comes to sensational ideas, we’re like cats chasing a laser pointer. We’ll pounce on anything that’s shiny and new. Only unlike a cat, we can actually catch hold of these ideas. Then we turn and become like a dog with a bone, defending our newfound prize as though it were sacred. “Look at the madness during the pandemic. No one wants to be sick. No one wants to suffer. No one wants to die in agony. No one starts out as an anti-vaxxer, but there goes the red dot of that goddamn laser pointer. It’s racing along the carpet. Gotta chase it! “Somewhere along the line, there will be some vague point that appeals to our vanity, to the passions we already hold—and that’s all that’s needed to believe a lie. We become convinced against all logic to the contrary. We throw out any logic we don’t like. We have to. We have to justify the madness—not the logic, the passion! And the irony is, the smarter we think we are, the easier it is to be fooled. “We overestimate our own intelligence when it’s largely irrelevant. You don’t need a blistering IQ to drive a car, do the laundry, play golf or walk the dog. Regardless of how smart we think we are, we rarely use our intelligence to its full potential. And it makes no difference anyway. Our collective intelligence is far more important than any one individual’s intelligence. It doesn’t matter how smart someone is, anyone can own an iPhone, but no one person can build one from scratch.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Collective intelligence, huh?” Crash says. “We’re not as smart as we think we are,” the professor replies. “We’re not logical. We like to flatter ourselves, but we’re easily fooled. We’re creatures of passion—emotion.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“back when the internet first exploded onto the scene, we faced the dot-com bubble, where excitement outstripped reality and a lot of businesses failed. And it wasn’t just small businesses. Nokia was once invincible, dominating the mobile phone market in the 90s. It looked unassailable, as did Blackberry, as did Kodak. Now, they’re museum pieces. “Then we had the social media bubble. For the first time, the world was united on one global platform. Facebook had more users than the ten largest countries in the world combined. And then disinformation set in, and the bubble of confidence burst, followed by a pandemic where lies took lives. “Then we had the AI bubble. AI was the future. AI would replace all our menial jobs and usher in utopia. Only it didn’t. It left the menial jobs untouched and stripped out the talent from where it was needed most. And then, like Ouroboros, the snake began eating its own tail.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“It didn’t come down to intelligence. Contrary to the stereotypes of the day, these people weren’t savages. Hell, the Aborigines were weaving fish traps and building complex weirs and rock walls to farm wild fish for over forty thousand years! That’s about twenty thousand years longer than Europeans. They weren’t stupid or simple. The Brewarrina fishing pools span over half a mile, with intricate rock formations taking into account tides and seasonal flooding. Archeologists think those fish farms could have sustained a population of around three thousand people—which is as large as most medieval cities in Europe. No, the Aborigines weren’t dumb. What the Aborigines lacked was writing, which allows precise knowledge to accumulate from one generation to another.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Whether it’s the Dutch in Asia, the British in India and China, the Spanish in South America, the Americans on the midwest plains or British colonists settling Australia and New Zealand, First Contact has never been in favor of the original inhabitants. Never. It has always favored the more technologically advanced civilization.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“The short clip replays over and over again. “Dr. Jonathan Wheeler at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has analyzed the chemical signatures in this image and tells me this is a Direct Fusion Drive. It’s something we can model on paper but cannot yet build. The exhaust plume is a form of plasma hotter than the surface of the Sun.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Western media mistakes the Russian word cosmonaut as being synonymous with astronaut, but they miss the heart of the concept. Russians have the word astronavt. If they wanted to call their celestial sojourners astronauts, they could. Cosmonaut, though, encompasses the Russian philosophy of cosmism. As far back as the 1850s, Nikolai Fyodorov advocated for science as the key to the future and to reaching human immortality. In 1903, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky developed the rocket equation, allowing humanity to reach for the stars. He longed to see Russians colonize not only the planets within the solar system but the galaxy as a whole. Cosmism influenced the October Revolution of 1917, launching the Communists into power. In Russian thinking, a cosmonaut is one who “strides forth from the earth to conquer planets and stars!”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“The chief of staff says, “It’s somewhat ironic that money comes before morals in the dictionary—because that’s the same damn place it holds in most people’s lives.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“We’re not rational. We like to think we are, but we’re not. First and foremost, we’re emotional. We think with our hearts, not our heads. We feel rather than think. And we’ll go with what we feel is right regardless of the evidence. This has been the case for tens of thousands of years. Superstitions, religions, myths, biases, prejudices—these dominate our history, not science. Science is an outlier. Science is a latecomer. Science is the exception, not the norm in society. Misinformation travels at the speed of light through fiber optics and satellite connections while scientists are still analyzing data.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Grouping like-minded people together tends to amplify their blind spots.”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts

“Oh, we like to think we are, but someone runs across the border, fleeing oppression, and we throw them in jail. We’re the biggest exporter of arms in the world. What if they’re civil like us?”
― Peter Cawdron, Ghosts