Charles Sheffield Quotes

Kallik’s explanation was neat, logical, and complete. Like most such explanations, it was, in Hans Rebka’s view, almost certainly wrong. That was not the way the real world operated.

You just can’t tell. Brains won’t correlate with appearance.

Intelligence is too subtle an attribute to be inferred from appearance.

D'you know what homeostasis is?"
"I used to, before I rotted my brain with politics.

Violence is never the only solution.

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.

And now I think about it, I never really wanted to live forever. I just want to live well.

When you have something to do, do it. When you have nothing to do, sleep.

Birdie cringed. If there was one thing worse than being a coward, it was being mistaken for a hero.

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.

You went through life in public office, laying claim to high morality when you knew quite well that at heart you were totally immoral. You were well acquainted with the majority of the seven deadly sins. Certainly pride, anger, and greed had their place in your life. You could claim a lifelong familiarity with and affection for lust.
And then, at an age when a man ought know himself, you discovered that your immorality had its limits.

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.

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?

Humans were inexplicable only if you assumed that they were logical.

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