Darwin's Children Quotes

“Mother Nature is a bitch.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile,”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“Robert’s problem was familiar to Aquinas. He called it ignorantia affectata, cultivated ignorance.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“Nature is a bitch goddess.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“Fresh in modern memory, for hamburger eaters anyway: Toxin gene transfer to E. coli bacteria in cattle,” Turner began. “Modern factory farming and slaughterhouse technique puts severe stress on the cattle, who send hormonal signals to their multiple tummies, their rumen. E. coli react to these signals by taking up phages—viruses for bacteria—that carry genes from another common gut bacteria, Shigella. Those genes just happen to code for Shiga toxin. The exchange does not hurt the cow, fascinating, no? But when a predator kills a cow-like critter in nature, and bites into the gut—which most do, eating half-digested grass and such, wild salad it’s called—it swallows a load of E. coli packed with Shiga toxin. That can make the predators—and us—very sick. Sick or dead predators reduce the stress on cows. It’s a clever relief valve. Now we sterilize our beef with radiation. All the beef.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“ERVs are useful during viviparous development. They help us subdue our mothers’ immune systems. Otherwise, her lymphocytes would kill the embryos, because in part they type for the father’s tissue.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“Explain it to me. God says he loves me but dumps me into a world of pain. You, so full of hate, so ignorant, he leaves alone. Self-righteous bigots he doesn’t even touch. Explain that to me!”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“A government based on fear attracts the worst elements, who corrupt it from within. A shaky edifice, a government against its people, any of its people, must soon collapse.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“You never know what it is like to be a child, even as a child. You have to have one of your own, and then it comes to you. You understand for the first time.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children

“Washington eats truth and shits spin.”
― Greg Bear, Darwin's Children