Split Second Quotes

“I’d”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“But there was no understanding an ideology this rabid, this diseased. Who could understand a woman who would strap a bomb on a child and send him or her into a crowded square?”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“The moral: the dimwitted and impulsive might not be able to hold a job or learn algebra, but they sure knew how to screw each other—and reproduce like crazy.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“If you were captain of a life raft with a maximum capacity of ten people, choosing to take five passengers of a sinking ship on board was an easy decision, not a heroic one. But what about when there were fifty passengers? Was it heroic to take them all, dooming everyone to death? Or was the heroic move using force, if necessary, to limit this number, to ensure some would survive? Sure, from the outside this looked coldhearted, while the converse seemed compassionate. But watching the world circle the drain because you were too much of a pussy to make the hard decisions was the real crime.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“hard-won”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“It turns out that while objects can move through space and time at different rates, they all move through space-time at exactly the same rate: the speed of light. Always.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Could he trust this man? He had thought he could trust Rourk, after all. And while Edgar Knight had always been a strange duck, he had trusted him as well. Until he learned otherwise—the hard way. Men were snakes. If God himself could be betrayed by an angel in Heaven—an angel named Satan, whom he was forced to cast out—certainly any man could be betrayed by any other man at any time.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Einstein: His Life and Universe,”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“A narrator pointed out that the process of natural selection once ensured that the strongest, smartest, or fastest reproduced in the greatest numbers. But now, in the case of human society, with no natural predators to thin the herd, evolution didn’t reward those with the most intelligence, but simply those who reproduced the most.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“And President Janney made sure this was a request they couldn’t refuse. So lucky us. We now have a polygraph system that is unbeatable. Today we get to find out, once and for all, who is ready to stab us in the back. Who is ready to drink the Kool-Aid that Edgar Knight is serving. Who wants to sabotage us and help this madman build a global government and take the helm.” “Assuming the mole is in our Inner Circle, of course,” added Joe Allen from beside him. “Right,” said Cargill. “Which I hope like hell isn’t the case. But either way, we’ll finally be confident we can trust each other, and we can move forward on that basis.” Cargill’s face hardened. “So none of you are leaving this room until all of you are tested. You should be honored to know that this will be the first use of the new test under field conditions.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“bright lights,” he said. “I’m afraid we’re a disappointment compared to Hollywood’s”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“human ability the world had ever seen, what he affectionately called his Brain Trust, a group so important he insisted these words be capitalized.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“rocket-propelled suppository”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“And when all was said and done, they were nothing more than civilians who managed to get donors excited enough to give them money, and then win a popularity contest. They weren’t the smartest or best trained that humanity had to offer, and they didn’t have the best judgment. The truly brilliant, truly gifted, wanted little to do with politics.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Technology . . . is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“anything I’ve ever done. This makes string theory look as simple as addition.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“but once it’s fleshed out, you never know. And even if it doesn’t quite reach the level of importance of relativity, I think it will be just as surprising to the world as this was”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“You’re about to drink wine that didn’t come out of a box, remarkable. Possible Nobel Prize remarkable. I haven’t begun to determine if there are any real-world applications, but on theoretical grounds this could be a huge breakthrough.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“talked to himself under his breath fairly frequently, and often couldn’t remember where he had left stuff, as though his mind was too powerful to dwell on the mundane.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“It never ceased to amaze him the power of the sex drive. No matter how intelligent and rational a person was otherwise, the sex drive was controlled by more primitive regions, and could turn the most brilliant man on Earth into an animal, flirting with disaster in pursuit of physical gratification, even when he knew in his rational mind that this was nothing but a trick played on him by his incorrigible limbic system.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Using big words isn’t impressive. Getting points across simply, succinctly, but with great clarity is.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“I’ve always loved bright people. But at the same time, I can’t stand intellectual snobs. You know, the type of people who look down their noses at anything mainstream, because they’re way too smart for that. The type who have to say everything as pretentiously as possible, using the most obscure vocabulary every chance they get.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Some people melted under pressure and some reacted to its squeeze by turning into diamond, becoming battle hardened.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“But while the West often failed to understand the motivations of these extremists, the extremists understood the motivations of the West only too well. They found the West soft. Gullible. Stupid. Its media easily manipulated.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Dr. Susan Schlesinger had wasted no time patching up his arm, stitching the wound as neatly as a seamstress, and hooking him up to an IV drip for meds, hydration, and nutrition. She had no idea what was really happening on the man-made island, but she was being paid a fortune not to display unnecessary curiosity, or complain about the lack of cell phone coverage or outgoing Internet. She had been told to care for every patient as though he or she were a head of state, and since she had only been there a week, and Rourk was her first patient, she had maintained a bedside vigil while he slept.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present. —Unknown”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“evolution didn’t reward those with the most intelligence, but simply those who reproduced the most.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“fertility and intelligence, dysgenics, and the Idiocracy effect.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second

“It never ceased to amaze him the power of the sex drive. No matter how intelligent and rational a person was otherwise, the sex drive was controlled by more primitive regions, and could turn the most brilliant man on Earth into an animal, flirting with disaster in pursuit of physical gratification, even when he knew in his rational mind that this was nothing but a trick played on him by his incorrigible limbic system. Walsh entered”
― Douglas E. Richards, Split Second