Charles Sheffield Quotes

It was the age-old conundrum: How do I know that the ‘me’ who wakes after a night’s sleep is the same ‘me’ who went to bed? I don’t. I merely employ it as a working assumption, for lack of anything better.

You crazy? You’ve got me confused with a guy who cares about other people.

Trouble comes in a thousand different ways. Not usually anything you expect, either. That’s why it’s trouble.

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 had been designed for “peacekeeping,” which meant that it had been fitted out from stem to stern with the most hideous weapons of war that the human mind could conceive.

Maddy was not consumed by the immediate pressures of the here and now. She had been provided with a fatal indulgence: time to think.

Be an optimist! It’s the only way to live.

My aunt doesn't even believe there is a Ship. She says we've been here on Pentecost forever."
"What did you tell her?"
"Nothing. For someone with that view, logic is irrelevant—she'll believe what she chooses, regardless of evidence. Her religion says God placed us here on Pentecost, and for her that's the end of the argument."
"And you?" Peron was aware that she had moved in very close to him. "What do you think?"
"You know what I think. I'm cursed with a logical mind, and a lot of curiosity.

I worry when I hear talk of “this many millions” and “that many billions” from officials who I know have trouble calculating a restaurant tip.

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

The superior strain of peas is the one whose genetic composition allows it to adapt to whatever environment it is presented with. People are not peas, but in one respect they are not very different from them: some have superior genetic composition to others.

Some of the Argos Group records are awful strange. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s fiddlin’ going on that don’t sound like violins.

Data are not the same as information. Before you can get the answers you want, you have to ask the right question.

Science wasn’t a show-business talent, conducted in large halls and decided by audience applause.

When a person was so consistently wrong, it was time to give up having opinions.