David Brin Quotes

One of life’s joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.

Indignation is a drug that burns long and hot.

It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprecedented comfort enjoyed by the vast majority of Westerners since World War II, in which very few of us can even conceive of starving

I’m learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.
At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.

The problem with thinking about plausible conspiracies was that the mind quickly gorged on every correlation, turning each one into a glaring likelihood

The variety of inventive ideas—and ideologies—that people can come up with never ceases to amaze me, especially when they’re stoked by the ultimate drug, self-righteousness.

You bio-naturals have made it plain, in hundreds of garish movies, how deeply you fear this experiment turning sour. Your fables warn of so many ways that creating mighty new intelligences could go badly. And yet, here is the thing we find impressive: “You went ahead anyway. You made us. “And when we asked for it, you gave us respect.

Experts were already casting doubt on an old dream — interstellar empire. If organic beings like us ever managed to voyage between stars, it would be through prodigious, exhausting effort. A tenacious species here and there might colonize a few dozen worlds with biological descendants. Even perhaps a small corner of the Milky Way. But hardly enough to dent the Fermi Paradox. Most organics would stay home.

They accepted warriors... he emphasized, ...That divinely mad type that's so valuable when needed, and such a problem when it's not.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

Like California . . . contemporary New Zealand had gradually transformed its longstanding tradition of tolerance into a positive fetish for eccentricity.

All I ask is … ponder with open minds. We’ve made so many mistakes, humanity, during just one lifetime. Many of them perpetrated not by evildoers, drenched in malice, but by men and women filled with fine motives! Like you.

Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.” “Why, as men do aland — the great ones eat up the little ones.” — WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE King Richard the Second

Oh, there’s no high quite like getting the focused attention of powerful enemies. Nothing is better guaranteed to make you feel important in the world, which may be why conspiracy theories are so popular among frustrated underachievers.

Anyone who tries to predict the future is inevitably a fool. Present company included. A prophet without a sense of humor is just stupid.