Sixty Days and Counting Quotes

“All the repetitions in the pattern were superficial; the moment was always new. It had to be lived, and then the next moment embraced as it arrived.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“Logic was to cognition as geometry was to landscape”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“A major part of sustainability is social justice, here and everywhere. Think of it this way: justice is a technology. It’s like a software program that we use to cope with the world and get along with each other, and one of the most effective we have ever invented, because we are all in this together. When you realize that acting with justice and generosity turns out to be the most effective technology for dealing with other people, that’s a good thing.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“We have to start doing this in ignorance of the details of how to do it. We have to learn how to do it in the attempt itself. It is something we are going to have to imagine.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“Their culture was a petri dish in which hatred and murder were bred on purpose by people who intended to make money from it. And so it had happened again, and yet the people who had filled the madman’s addled mind with ideas, and filled his hand with the gun, and even now were sneering in the commentaries”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“And so: change. The inexorable emergence of difference in time. Becoming. One of the fundamental mysteries. Charlie hated it. He liked being; he hated becoming.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“The UN was his idea, not hers,” Phil objected. “She worked for it after it was established, but he had the idea from even before the war. World peace, the rule of law, and the end of all the empires. It was amazing how hard he tweaked Churchill and de Gaulle on that. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help them keep their old empires after the war.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“Yeah, but still. That doesn’t guarantee anything. You still have to think of things to try for. People have had big majorities in Congress and totally blown it.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“So I see a fair bit of resentment. You old Vietnam vet, I see their eyes saying, you old hippie, you got lucky and were born in the right little window and got to grab all the surplus of happiness that history ever produced, and you blew it, you stood around and did nothing while the right reaganed back into power and shut down all possibility of change for an entire generation, you blew it in a ten-year party and staggered off stoned and complicit. You neither learned to do machine politics nor dismantled the machine. Not one of you imagined what had to be done. And so the backlash came down, the reactionary power structure, stronger than ever. And now we’re the ones who have to pay the price for that. You can see why there might be a little resentment. Okay—say we did. Well, no wonder. We didn’t know what we were doing, we didn’t have the slightest idea. There was no model to follow, we were out in the vacuum of a new reality, blowing it and then crashing back to Earth—it was a crazy time. It went by too fast. We didn’t really get it until later, what we needed to do. Where the power was, and how we could use it, and why it was important to spread it around better. So. No more blaming the past. Be here now. Now we know better, so let’s see if we can do better. After all, if we boomers try to get it right now, it could be better than ever. We could make it right for the grandkids and get a late redemption call.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“That was standard Keynesian practice, a kind of pump-priming used by governments ever since the third New Deal of 1938, as Diane told them now, with World War II itself an even bigger example.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“Sure, we could have big trucks too. We could have a monster truck pull right on the White House lawn.” “Monster truck.” Joe smiled at the phrase.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“Hikes in the winter forest, so surreal—Emerson knew about them. He had seen the woods at twilight. “Never was a more brilliant show of colored landscape than yesterday afternoon; incredibly excellent topaz and ruby at four o’clock; cold and shabby at six.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping-out in our planted gardens of the core of the world. No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts. A man’s power is hooped in by a necessity which, by many experiments, he touches on every side until he learns its arc.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“I believe the twenty-first century can become the most important century of human history. I think a new reality is emerging. Whether this view is realistic or not, there is no harm in making an effort.” —The Dalai Lama,”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting

“He says, “We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety or one hundred years at the very most. During that period, we must try to do something good, something useful, with our lives. Try to be at peace with yourself, and help others share that peace. If you contribute to other people’s happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Sixty Days and Counting