Top 15 Charles E. Gannon Quotes

In the face of crisis, I will choose unauthorized action over disastrous inaction.

Weiner-Kutkh waved airily. “I seem to have been born lucky.”
“Said every cheater who’s ever lived,” Caine retorted.

Worse yet, he still had to remind himself that sensations—such as tonight’s skin-cooling sea breeze—were just a blizzard of electric impulses, tricking his brain, his nerves.
Which, he had begun to fear, might not just be the endgame for Dornaani civilization. It could be in humanity’s future as well. Conceivably, those seeds were latent in electricity itself. Given how it ultimately expanded each individual’s sphere of contact and control, its utility was inseparable from the allure of its power. We summon heat and light without having to create it ourselves. We communicate across continents and oceans. We operate machines that labor in our stead. We keep opponents at a safe distance with remote sensors and drones. Is that how the long, subtle slide into speciate senescence began, that the more a species distanced itself from direct action, the more unfamiliar the natural environment became?

When such leaders act in opposition to their sworn duties, they compound injustice with disgrace.

Human, do you derive some strange pleasure by using different words to reiterate the same misperceptions?

It is in the nature of social creatures to crave approval and approbation, to build a temple out of what they have told themselves they are and must be."
Oduosslun stared at Riordan. "Reject that reflex. Reject the simplistic narrative. Reject the opiating allure of presuming you know your own destiny. Rather, embrace the ineluctable truth that you are not preordained saviors in the midst of a mythic cycle, any more than we were the guardians and guarantors of civilization. Like us, you are simply another species living out the consequences of what came before.

Whatever destiny we assign to ourselves also defines our doom. It is there, lurking, waiting, from the instantiation of sentience. It is the antipodal defect of the virtue we call 'foresight.'

Riordan almost smiled. “You sound like another historian I know.”
“Historian?” She stiffened. “I am an observer. I do not claim to convey a unified story, just the pieces for which I have data.”

It was the oldest, most primal fear of humankind, inculcated by eons of brutal lessons which, titrated down into their purest form, became age’s invariable advice to youth: beware the things and places you do not know.Because out there, beyond the flickering ring of the tribal fire, on the unlit streets of concrete cities, in the unending depths of space—there lay an unquantifiable, unbounded potential for death.

Aren't you even going to wish me luck?"
"We do not believe in luck, Caine Riordan. However, I wish enlightenment unto you. In every passing second.

Whose tutelage led you into those fishless waters?

Stupid creatures tend to be stubborn creatures.

I could offer considerable inducements. I can arrange for a new mate who is, in all meaningful measures, superior to the one you are currently pursuing. You look unimpressed. Ah, multiple mates, then? Within reason, I am quite certain I can procure—"
Riordan was careful to keep his interruption calm. "I am not interested in other mates."
"Ah. Well. I am also able to provide you with material riches. I believe your species persists in its obsession with gold? To use your idiom, I would pay you handsomely for any successful breeding activity. Even if you do not wish to stay afterward."
Riordan forced his molars to unclench.
Uinzleej moved on to his next offer. "What else—ah! Many of your species enjoy hunting. This world is full of creatures you may kill for your gratification.

I guess that, living in a sanitized world, you’ve forgotten this basic lesson: if you want to stay free or stay alive, never play by your opponent’s rules. Particularly when your opponent is more powerful than you are. Do the unexpected. Turn on your pursuer. Attack the attacker.

Riordan surveyed the scene again. Knowing that it could not be other than perfect made it seem less remarkable, much in the way a constructed vista in a theme park could never quite compare with a less perfect one discovered in nature. This was merely a technological achievement, and the price of its perpetual perfection was its inability to inspire a sense of grandeur.