Charles Sheffield Quotes

But no one, no matter how intelligent, could make good inferences from bad data.

The laws of probability not only permit coincidences; they absolutely insist on them.

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.

Maddy listened closely to John’s voice. It was calm, but with an odd undercurrent of excitement. She thought, That weirdo, he’s enjoying this. If I were a failing component, I’d get more of his attention than I do now. Engineers!

That’s why we want it. Impossible gadgets are always the most valuable.

He was acquitted; he must have been."
"Right. Good lawyer, tainted evidence. But that doesn't mean he was innocent.

There was one good argument against cloning, and only one. It increased the total number of people, and to me that number already felt far too large.

It is very clear that nothing in nature presents such a danger to the human race is our own actions.

But mere plausibility did not make the statement true.

But humans had to learn to ignore appearance. No two beings who shared common thinking processes and common goals should be truly alien to each other.

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

Other people’s jobs always seemed easier than yours until you actually had to do them.

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.

The first space colonies had been conceived as utopias, planned by Earth idealists who wouldn’t learn from history. New frontiers may attract visionaries, but more than that they attract oddities. Anyone who is more than three sigma away from the norm, in any direction, seems to finish out there on the frontier. No surprise in that. If a person can’t fit, for whatever reason, he’ll move away from the main group of humanity. They’ll push him, and he’ll want to go.

If deadly violence were to be committed, he was like me. He would think it better to give than to receive.