Gregory Benford Quotes

Manuel stared at the place where Piet had been. The man he had known so little would now lie in this place far beyond the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome and the hammer of Marx, in a territory open and without plan, beyond man and his encasing theories, his filters, beyond the closed rooms of the civilized mind.

Government doesn’t often move quickly, but when they do, it’s like an elephant stampede.

A particle detector that ran beautifully was either obsolete or hadn’t been designed close enough to the cutting edge of the technology.

Sure," Max said offhand, "there are plenty of archbishops wringing their hands, mumbling philosophers and New Age gab pouring out in the media, but so what?" She laughed. He said New Age as one word, "newage," rhyming with "sewage.

Prolonged exposure to journalists made her distrust any news report; they got matters wrong so casually, even the simple ones.

Schools praised diversity but were culturally the same. Different skin color, same opinions.

Only fools get to join.

The personal was, compared with the tides of great nations, a bothersome detail.

The desire to find something could provoke what she called “wantum mechanics,” fishing a result out of nothing but noise.

Data always overruled theory.

If you were damned certain you weren’t looking for something, there was a very good chance you wouldn’t see it.

All the astronauts were easy on the eyes. No coincidence. NASA didn’t train people the public wouldn’t want to watch.

None of the above. That’s often the right answer, and bugger the exams.

Exercise erased cares.

Professors everywhere deplored examinations as an archaic technique, a fossil that recalled little red schoolhouses and memorizing the capitals of all the states. Regular progress and daily diligence mattered more, they felt, not an hour spent compressing months of learning onto a few sheets of paper. Far better to stress homework, classroom participation and the professor’s judgment. Regrettably, the large size of classes, and the requirements of society itself for pseudo-objective standards kept the exam structure firmly in place.