Robert J. Sawyer Quotes

I have no choice, do I?
Afsan turned his blind eyes on his friend. "That's the funny thing about being a leader, Dybo: you rarely do."

“And of me you ask which choice you should make?” said the translator’s voice.
“Yes,” I said.
There was the sound of rocks grinding, followed by a brief silence, and then: “The moral choice is obvious,” said the Wreed. “It always is.”
“And?” I said. “What is the moral choice?”
More sounds of rocks, then: “Morality cannot be handed down from an external source.” ... “It must come from within.”
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
The Wreed wavered and vanished.

I guess what it means is this: to be human is to be fragile. We are easily hurt, and not just physically. We are easily hurt emotionally, too. So, as you move through life, my son, try not to hurt others.

You know his dictum: nothing is anything unless it is something. That is, a concept without material reality is meaningless.

There are two opposing forces—the high mind and the low—but they reside in our brains, not various parts of our bodies. The high mind contains the conscious, the understood, the learned—that of which we are aware. The low mind consists of instincts and base impulses, of drives; it's the province of the subconscious. The struggle between high and low mind produces the personality."
"But surely the high mind is who we really are," said Afsan.
"No. The high mind may represent who we want to be, or who the church says we should be, but we are just as much our low minds as we are our high; the low mind shapes our behavior, too."

You are spoiled by being a sociologist, Lansing. In the hard sciences, we occasionally have to face the reality that some of our theories will actually be disproven.

Not wanting to die was another universal constant, it seemed.

We cannot be afraid to look.
"But some things are best left unknown," she said.
"Nothing is best left unknown," said Toroca. "Nothing."

The fundamental of war has always been dehumanizing the enemy, seeing him as a soulless animal.

“That’s not an appealing thought.”
Afsan had never worried about how appealing any given idea was, only about how accurate it might be.

I believe the creator may have a specific reason for wanting a universe that has life in it, and, indeed, as you say, for wanting multiple sentiences to emerge simultaneously. But it seems clear beyond dispute that the creator takes no interest in specific individuals.

'Justice,' he said, his breath coming out raggedly as he quoted another Nobel laureate—at that precise moment, he couldn't remember which one—'is always delayed and finally done only by mistake.'

Throwing some light on the subject had only made the mystery deeper.

Jag barked dismissively. “Philosophy,” he said. “Not science. They just want to believe that.”

...but there, because there is no grace of God, go I.