Charles Sheffield Quotes

Only the final choice would require a human decision: enter the Link, or decline to do so? It occurred to Chan that perhaps this was the choice that humans were least qualified to make. He recognized in himself the tendency to say, we’ve come so far, we can’t possibly change our minds now. People following that philosophy died climbing mountains, they signed disastrous contracts, they flew into hurricanes, and they embarked on lifelong commitments to the wrong mates. Perhaps they headed to the stars for the same reason.

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.

It was the classic question; you had two tasks to perform and one promised to be much harder and more unpleasant than the other. Did you tackle the tough one first and get it out of the way? Or did you postpone, and hope that before you came to the hard part you might be struck by a meteorite, or that a solar flare would wipe out life in the solar system?

He had written the man off completely, and now here came common sense and a talent for improvisation. Maybe you didn’t have to be an idiot just because you were rich.

Korin stared. It must be a novelty, finding someone more paranoid than he was.

Never get involved in a venture with a man who inherited his money and didn’t earn any himself. He’ll assume he’s smarter than you are, just because he’s rich and you’re not, and he’ll expect you to bow down to his greatness because for all his life people have.

Violence is never the only solution.

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

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

I find that prayers don’t work when you need them most. Unless you answer them for yourself.

In the old words of wisdom, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and that’s usually enough to get by.

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

Who should run the world? There’s no easy answer, no magic solution. There never is, to a really hard question.

Although the schoolchildren of this country emerge from our institutions of supposed learning ninety percent illiterate, knowing nothing of science, nothing of technology, little geography, and less history, every one of them will tell you who rules the country. We are governed by the interaction of a President, learned judges, and our people’s representatives.
Every child knows this; and every child is wrong. Perhaps it was once that way, but today the Court and President and Congress are either members of the old and wealthiest families, like the Michelsons and Brooks; or they have been bought and controlled by them. The sprawl of government passes and implements policies. But far fewer people, about a hundred in number, set policies.

Sometimes I think about dying. And then I wonder about going to hell. And then I think that if and when I go there, the place will be completely organized and run by lost souls, with a council and a works committee and an ethics panel, and I’ll feel right at home.