Cold Eyes Quotes

“Learning is the mind taking a deep breath.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“being bored is a privilege. Being bored is a luxury. For most of human history, people scavenged for food, worked fields from sunrise to sunset, hunted game, wove clothing, cleaned animal hides. Having nothing to do is an honor few have ever enjoyed before modern times.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“People think leadership is about making the right decision. It’s not. It’s about making the best of a bunch of bad decisions. It’s about sailing through a storm and out the other side.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Reason is an extension rather than a replacement for knowledge. Ignorance is an impediment.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“tunnel vision is our greatest danger. We can’t afford to become locked into believing there’s only one way to do things. Just stop for a moment. Think about how absurd that is. Think about how it stifles progress. If we only ever looked at what we knew, we would have never walked across the savannah or sailed over the horizon.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Uniforms are another universal trait. It seems the desire to whitewash the chaos and brutality of war with clean lines and sharp dress is shared across star systems.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Of all the traits to be universal”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“His stomach rumbles. “At least Mark Watney had potatoes.” Dali pushes on through the water.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Remember”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Inequality leads to war,”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Ah”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“know”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Yes. They’ll flood this sphere.” “They’re going to kill everyone—including themselves.” “Such is the cycle,” Rose says. “We will do all we can to stop them, but the madness will win. It always does. It sets back progress for what would be hundreds of thousands of your years.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Dali lunges out of the hatch, wanting to step onto the delta wing outside the airlock, but he’s whipped away in a fraction of a second. One moment, the Ranger was right there. The next, it’s gone. Up is down. An alien world spins around him. The horizon tumbles. Above him, the dark of space fades to a soft blue. Out on the edge of his vision, he can see mountains. They’re there and then they’re not. His head presses hard against the inside of his helmet as he spins out of control. If he doesn’t do something soon, he’s going to blackout. Even the massive letters on the LED beneath his helmet are a blur. His fingers reach for the handle on the side of his survival vest. He only hopes he hasn’t bumped the dial as his arms flayed around. Dali pulls the lever.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“We all want something more,” Dali says. “Intelligence demands more. Being alive demands more, but what we’re looking for isn’t out there somewhere. That’s the curse of intelligence—never being satisfied, always longing for something but not knowing what. To be content. To accept life for what it is rather than trying to make it something it’s not. That’s what we need.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“We’ve moved on to Lorenz equations.” “Oh,” Sandy says, snuggling in next to him and resting her hand on his chest. “What are they?” “Don’t ask,” Dali says, resting on a pillow with his hands behind his head. “Seriously. All I know is, if you plug them into a graph, they make shapes that look like butterfly wings.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“To err is human—to be utterly reliable time and time again takes a computer. “Fifty meters.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Zero only means zero because we all agree it means zero,” Dali says. “Of itself, there’s nothing about the word that indicates that other than how it’s used. Zero is an idea that escaped the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. It took Arabic mathematicians to realize nothing was something of significance in its own right. Of all the numbers above, zero is the one that will tell them the most about how we think as it’s the most intangible.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“On Earth, the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, the Greeks democracy, the Chinese gunpowder, the Europeans optical glass. Our civilization is a blend of these over time. We”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“They need to understand who we are, not who we pretend to be.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Winnowing the population causes an evolutionary bottleneck. It’s become a selective pressure, shaping us, only it’s not survival of the fittest. It’s survival of the cruelest.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Whatever it was, the stress caused the weld near the valve to crack. That has to be the vent Helios was talking about.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Sometimes, it’s what’s not said that speaks loudest.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“he sees nothing beyond the padded lining on the inside of his helmet. An alien warrior could be creeping up through the long grass and he’d never know it until the spear pierced his suit.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“for the most part, every amino acid is left-handed, while every sugar is right-handed.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Radium,” Kari replies, “thorium, uranium, platinum—all of the radioactive elements.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Science is about the act of looking regardless of results.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“punching commands into her wrist pad computer with thick gloves.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Zero is an idea that escaped the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans. It took Arabic mathematicians to realize nothing was something of significance in its own right.”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes

“Go into the city center, and all the business suits are power-walking or running somewhere. They’re uptight. Anxious. They think they’re focused. They’re not. They’re blinkered. They’re thinking only about themselves. They’re hurrying somewhere for no other reason than to be in a hurry. Important stuff must be done. But what they don’t realize is they’re missing the most important thing of all—life is passing them by.” Sandy says, “And you think skipping would solve that?” “It wouldn’t hurt,” Dali says. He poses a question. “If you saw someone skipping down the sidewalk toward you, what would you think?”
― Peter Cawdron, Cold Eyes