Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

Any do-gooder can save one life or a dozen by spending x dollars, but that doesn't demonstrate anything unless you've got x dollars multiplied by the total number of lives that need saving. Stopping poverty one victim at a time is like mowing a lawn one blade at a time. The problem grows faster than the cure can be applied, the only people who profit are the agencies who claim to be cutting grass while they're actually applying fertilizer.

I have discovered something else, Throsset of Dowes. And that is that men give women jewels when they have absolutely no idea what might please them and are not willing to take time to think about it.

I am myself, though from moment to moment something else seems to be looking on. Whatever will be required of me, however, can best be done if I remember who I am.

Men like to think well of themselves, and poets help them do it.

— Me dijeron que las verdades eternas… — ¿Cómo cuáles — Dios se rió — . ¡Si hubiera alguna verdad eterna Yo lo sabría ¡He creado todo un cosmos basado en el cambio y un ser minúsculo viene aquí para hablarme de verdades eternas — No quería ofenderte. Es sólo que… Bueno sí no hay verdades eternas ¿cómo podemos saber dónde está la verdad — No me has ofendido. Nunca creo cosas capaces de ofenderme. En cuanto a la verdad la verdad es lo que está escrito. Todas las cosas de la creación llevan mis intenciones escritas en sí mismas. Las rocas las estrellas los seres minúsculos… Para cada cosa sólo hay un camino natural el camino que Yo he concebido para ella. El problema es que los seres minúsculos escriben libros que contradicen a las rocas y luego dicen que Yo escribí los libros y que las rocas son mentiras. — Se rió. El universo tembló — . Inventan reglas de conducta que ni los ángeles pueden obedecer y dicen que Yo las he ideado. El orgullo de la autoría… — Dejó escapar una risita — . Dicen: «Oh estas palabras son eternas así que deben de haber sido escritas por Dios».

For several days they cut, trimmed, and stacked the slender trunks, trying to pick ones that were straight and uniform in size, being careful not to clear-cut any area of the forest, a deed which Jep’s mom would have regarded as only slightly less dishonorable than genocide.

Only mavericks live in accordance with their desires, and even they don’t often get away with it. They are usually labeled as troublemakers and gotten rid of.

Here we are after a couple million years of natural selection has produced a race that overpopulates and makes war and dominates and rapes, and you want to know about wisdom! Natural selection doesn’t select for wisdom!

“How did you know we were Voorstoders?” he asked in a silken voice.
“You said ‘Lord knows,’” the man replied. “Voorstoders say that. I do a bit of reading in the Archives, bit of a hobby with me. Like to read about those old religions. That Lord-this, Lord-that kind of talk belongs to the old tribal religions, doesn’t it?” Old and outworn, said his voice. Old and outworn and suspect.

There always has to be someone to see things first.

The human problem?" I asked, somewhat offended.
She put her arm around me. "Forgive me, Gretamara, but your race as a whole has the unfailing habit of fouling its nest, killing its original planet, and doing its best to kill any others to which it is moved. Because we love and admire the human race for its many good qualities, we call this not 'the human condition,' meaning an irrevocable state, but 'the human problem,' one we wish to solve. The effort has gone on for some millennia, without result, and some of those involved in the effort are beginning to believe it is a waste of time and treasure.

Star calls to star: “Here I am, who is like me?” Tree calls to tree: “I am I, who knows me?

My grandfather said people who can learn, learn morality the way they learn everything else, by building on history. He also said that some people cannot learn from history, so they cannot change. For them, there’s only one book or tradition or whatever it’s called in their religion, and in that book God is eternal and whatever the book says God commanded two or three or four thousand years ago, God still commands today. That may be kill homosexuals or kill nonbelievers. It may say enslave your enemies. It may say mutilate or sequester women, or sell your ten-year-old daughter for somebody’s third wife.

It is our minds and not any other attribute which gives us personhood and value. We share intelligence with other living things, and they are no less important than we. Even creatures without detectable intelligence have adapted themselves to play necessary roles. To make God in our image or we in God’s is blasphemy.

He told us that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. He told us to seek justice rather than the Game.