John Scalzi Quotes

You are sufficiently like me to officially be interesting.

Harry!" Boutin said. "Nice guy. Didn't know he was that smart. He hid it well.

That’s physicists for you. Not exactly brimming over with poetry.

No, it's not fair. You're in the wrong universe for fair.

When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it.

“I didn’t say that,” Szilard said, in a tone that implied that perhaps he had.

Jared, allow me to share with you my philosophy of human beings. It can be summed up in four words: I like good people.

Rationality is not one of humanity’s strong points.

Those people you saw—the realborn—are born without a plan. They’re born because biology tells humans to make more humans; but it doesn’t consider what to do with them after that. Realborn go for years without the slightest clue what they’re going to do with themselves. From what I understand, some of them never actually figure it out. They just walk through life in a daze and then fall into their graves at the end of it. Sad. And inefficient.

Human technology was good, and weapon to weapon humans were as well-equipped as the vast majority of their adversaries. But the weapon that ultimately matters is the one behind the trigger.

It's Charlie's soul," he repeated. "Or more accurately, it's a holographic representation of the dynamic electrical system that embodies the consciousness of Charles Boutin.

I'm not insane, sir," I said. "I have a finely calibrated sense of acceptable risk.

Obviously, the Rraey have some way to predict, with a high degree of accuracy, where our ships are going to skip. How do they do that?"
"I don't think you're supposed to be able to," I said.
"That's exactly right. But they do anyway. So, quite obviously, our model of how skipping works is wrong. Theory gets thrown out the window when observation proves it isn't so. The question now is what is really going on.

I’m not sure I like their plan for converting us to their religion, seeing as it involves dying and all.

In this universe, experience counts.