Charles Sheffield Quotes

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

As you will one day discover, a leader is not a leader because of the way that he or she behaves. He is a leader only because of the way that he is treated by others.

Luck is infatuated with the efficient.

Where orbits are wildly varying, life has no chance to develop. Changes are too extreme. Temperatures melt tin, then solidify nitrogen. If it is once established, life is persistent; it can adapt to many extremes. But there is a fragility in the original creation that calls for a long period of tightly-controlled variations.

Any other instructions?"
"Not without breaking one of my own golden rules. In an unpredictable situation, the man or woman on the spot should make the decisions, not the general sitting on his ass a million miles away from the action.

The leaders of the Legion of Argos were out-of-this-world mad. Rigid in outlook, intolerant of minor differences. In other centuries they would have led the Inquisition, tortured the heretics, burned the witches.

The limits we assign to Nature sometimes define our own lack of imagination.

I do not like to concatenate implausibilities.

The important question wasn’t whether or not you thought you were the right one to lead. It was whether others believed you were.

Are we perhaps guilty of temporal chauvinism, believing that our own time is uniquely important, as all generation tend to think that their time is of unique importance?

One thing you have to teach the young is that it’s wrong to run away from problems.

Is that what it takes to go all the way in politics? Ambition first, everything else back in the pack?
And if it is, would any sane human want to have what it takes?

It is my personal belief that nothing can exceed light speed," said Sy at last. "I will mistrust anyone, government or Immortal, man or woman, human or alien, who attempts to tell me otherwise without providing convincing evidence.

In any civilized society, it is the individual or group who creates a problem that must have responsibility for solving it.

And there you had it. Most people hate to learn that they are wrong. Not McAndrew. When he’s proved wrong, he’s ecstatic. It means he’s learned something new, and that’s his main reason for existence.