Charles Sheffield Quotes

Once you were committed to a course of action, you didn’t waste your time looking back and second-guessing the decision, because every action in life was taken on the basis of incomplete information. You looked at what you had, and you did all you could to improve the odds; but at some point you had to roll the dice—and live or die with whatever you had thrown.

Logic was good, but too much logical analysis inhibited action. Darya had heard it seriously suggested that the original human cladeworld, Earth, had degenerated to an ineffectual backwater of a planet because computer trade-off analysis had increasingly been used as the basis for decision making. On purely logical grounds, no one would ever explore, invent, rejoice, sing, strive, fall in love, or take physical and psychological risks of any kind. Better to stay in bed in the morning; it was much safer.

The answers come pat and fast. You see, what the downsiders want isn’t an explanation; it’s a catchphrase they can use instead of an explanation.

We're just too nosy, Commander," he went on. "Most humans have their patience level set a little too low, and their curiosity a bit too high.

The mills of bureaucracy may or may not grind fine, but they certainly grind exceeding slow.

It is not clear to me whether the insouciance of youth will be the doom of humanity or its salvation. I prefer to think the latter, but I have my doubts.

When you pay somebody off, it only increases their demands. I know, only too well. They are never satisfied with what they get.

The ship climbed steadily and laboriously up, away from the plane of the ecliptic. Finally, the parallax was sufficient to move the planets from their usual apparent positions. Mars, Earth, Venus, and Jupiter all sat in constellations that were no part of the familiar zodiac. Mercury was cowering close to the sun. Saturn alone, swinging out at the far end of her orbit, seemed right as seen from the ship. Bey Wolf, picking out their positions through a viewport, wondered idly how the astrologers would cope with such a situation. Mars seemed to be in the House of Andromeda, and Venus in the House of Cygnus. It would take an unusually talented practitioner to interpret those relationships and cast a horoscope for the success of this enterprise.

I do not like to concatenate implausibilities.

One form of insanity bears the name curiosity.

It’s the usual sensation mongering; the news services will say anything for an effect.

Hans Rebka sat on a rounded pyramid never designed for contact with the human posterior, and thought about luck.
There was good luck, which mostly happened to other people. And there was bad luck, which usually happened to you. Sometimes, through observation, guile, and hard work, you could avoid bad luck—even make it look like good luck, to others. But you would know the difference, even if no one else did.
Well, suppose that for a change good luck came your way. How should you greet that stranger to your house? You could argue that its arrival was inevitable, that the laws of probability insisted that good and bad must average out over long enough times and large enough samples. Then you could welcome luck in, and feel pleased that your turn had come round at last.
Or you could hear what Hans Rebka was hearing: the small, still voice breathing in his ear, telling him that this good luck was an impostor, not to be trusted.

Professor Lang's important work, with all due respect, does not answer that question." The knife, sliding in hidden behind the compliment. "With all due respect" meant "with no respect at all.

Did you do what I asked you to?"
"As much as I could. Have you ever tried to brief your boss, without telling her what's going on?"
"A hundred times. It's the first rule of self-preservation.

Like many things in life, the problem I had been so sure I could solve proved more difficult than it sounded.