Adam Roberts Quotes

Diana got that seventh-sense intimation that she had touched on an unmentionable matter; although a strangely involuted one whereby the fact that it was unmentionable was itself unmentionable.

As far as dreams were concerned—well dreams are generated by the random processes of neural oscillation during the brain’s rest phases. What dreams do is cycle and recycle images and feelings, rationalisations and fears. There’s nothing special about that. It’s not the dreams that matter (chaff, mental turbulence, the rotating metal bars moving endlessly through the transparent tub of metaphorical slushy). It is what the problem-solving circuits in the mind make of the dreams. Dreams iterate and test mental schemas, discarding the maladaptive to return the adaptive to the slush to be reworked. Dreams are emotional preparations for solving problems—that is why we have evolved them, because problem-solving abilities are highly adaptive and thus strongly evolutionarily selected. Dreams intoxicate the individual out of reliance on common sense and preconception, and tempt her into the orbit of private logic. Dreams have utility.

“The rest of the materials inside your submarine must have floated—must have flown around! What did you think?”
“Some people,” Lebret confessed, “suggested poltergeists.”
“Poltergeists!” Dakkar’s huge face registered astonishment. “Are you all idiots?”
“It was a chaotic time,” said Lebret, weakly.
“Poltergeists!” repeated Dakkar, disbelievingly. “I was certain it would be scientists who responded to my message! Instead they have sent down a clutch of gullible mystics and table-rappers!” He sounded genuinely disgusted.

Very well. I do not wish to initiate a political discussion. I care only for loyalty."
"Loyalty," said Jhutti, "is a political word.

His last hours alive. But he didn’t know!
None of us will know, of course. The weird grammar of death. You die, he or she dies, they die, but there is no genuine form for “I”. Not really. All know that, none know when.

Billiard-Fannon’s expression hardened. “Say the words,” he ordered. “Say them, or displease me. You do not wish to see the displeasure of the Holy One!”
“I do not wish to see the Holy One at all,” said Jhutti.

It's not right. A human being is a human being. A human being is not a toy."
"We cannot help but use the people below us as a resource, my love," said her two MOHmies, as one. "That is what it means to be in power. Your choice is to relinquish power forever, or to accept that and use people for good."...
"If we are powerful," sang her MOHmies, "we can make things better, but we are made unclean by the fact that we have power. If we are powerless we remain clean, but we cannot make things better.

It had to be one or the other. Did it have to be one or the other? Even the question as to whether it had to be one or the other had to be one or the other!

You're just doing that to pass the time," said Davide, dismissively.
"Just to pass the time," agreed Jac. "Though I suppose time will pass, in any case, regardless of what I do.

I shouldn't be naive" Diana said. "Of course, realising its destructive power only makes them want it more. Of course. Even more than great wealth, power craves technologies of destruction. Good to be wealthy, but better to remain in power—and the more awe-inspiring the weaponry at your disposal, the better able you are to do that.

But once we are free...once we have evolved beyond the old medieval power structures and the medieval internecine violence they create, then we’ll be able to use the technology responsibly. Everything depends on that.

Money is not our concern. Our concern is the sea. The sea is not persuaded by bankers’ drafts and stocks of bullion; the sea respects nothing but the grit and willpower of dedicated seamen.

The future cannot be won with the weapons of the past," insisted Dakkar. "To rise up like Spartacus will only lead to millions of ordinary people being crucified, and the Caesars—and Czars—retaining an even tighter grip on power. No, no, the future must be won for justice and equality with the weapons of the future.

Death is the currency of power.

“Do not,” Dakkar barked, “juxtapose yourself and myself in any sentence your mouth may form!