Charles Sheffield

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

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

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?

Everyone was somebody’s cousin, or uncle, or bedmate, or best college friend. Sometimes he felt that the whole of Washington was glued together into one vast, incestuous, and inefficient snotball.

Darya had a few moments of wild hope before logic intruded.

Earth has been regarded for centuries as a giant self-regulating machine, absorbing all changes, great and small, and diluting their effects until they become invisible on a global scale. Mankind has taken that stability for granted. Careless of consequences, we have watched as forests were cleared, lakes poisoned, rivers dammed and diverted, mountains leveled, whole plains dug out for their mineral and fuel content. And nothing disastrous happened. Earth tolerated the insults, and always she restored the status quo.
Always—until now. Until finally some hidden critical point has been passed. The move away from a steady state is signalled in many ways: by increasing ocean temperatures, by drought and flood, by widespread loss of topsoil, by massive crop failure, and by the collapse of worldwide fishing industries.

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

We both know that actions taken from internal conviction are far better motivated than any external commands.

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

I think I'll have a sign made for that far wall," said Bey at last.
"Indeed?"
"Yes. It will say, 'If you have nothing to do, please don't do it here'.

What purpose and will didn’t tell you, unfortunately, was how to do something that must be done.

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.

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.

The partners were there; gravity was calling the changes, and the cosmic dance was ready to begin.

“I wonder why somebody would go to all that trouble to make a complete fool of himself.”
“Come on, Gina, we both know why.”
“Oh, I guess you’re right. Money will always do it.”
Of course.