Gregory Benford > Quotes

“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, is the reverse.”
― Gregory Benford, The Martian Race

“A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“When the chemistry is right, all the experiments work.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“In a tough situation, don't avoid acting just because it's easier or comfortable. Don't lapse into a passive state. People who give up, die.”
― Gregory Benford and Larry Niven Bowl of Heaven Beth

“Definitions, her grandmother once said, had to be like a fat man's belt - big enough to cover the subject but elastic enough to allow for change.

The Sunborn”
― Gregory Benford

“The biggest mistake is being too afraid of making one.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“Cynic’ is a word invented by optimists to criticize realists.”
― Gregory Benford, In the Ocean of Night

“Remember that people break down, too, not just machinery.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. —MULLA NASRUDIN”
― Gregory Benford, Bowl of Heaven

“It is one thing to speak of embracing the new, the fresh, the strange. It is another to feel that one is an insect, crawling across a page of the Encyclopedia Britannica, knowing only that something vast is passing by beneath, all without your sensing more than a yawning vacancy.”
― Gregory Benford

“If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.”
― Gregory Benford, Foundation's Fear

“Human life is a voyage on a sea of meaning, not a net of information.”
― Gregory Benford, Foundation's Fear

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”
― Gregory Benford, The Martian Race

“Even their stable societies oscillated between banquets and barbarism.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available”
― Gregory Benford, Timescape

“the Law of Controversy: Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.”
― Gregory Benford, Timescape: A Novel

“Certainty is the lot of those who do not ask questions.”
― Gregory Benford, Tides of Light

“(He) had always thought that life's journey wasn't to get to your grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to tumble in, wrecked, shouting, What a ride!”
― Gregory Benford and Larry Niven Bowl of Heaven Beth

“Around them small animals scampered along knotted cables and flaking vines, chirruping, squealing, venting yellow farts. Everywhere was animation, purpose, hurry. Momentum.”
― Gregory Benford

“Self-knowledge, she thought ruefully, is mostly bad news.”
― Gregory Benford, Shadows of Eternity

“...the movies are most people's exposure to ideas about the future.”
― Gregory Benford, The Martian Race

“His ass knows more words than his mouth does.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“Try to get all your posthumous medals in advance.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“Fame is the accumulation of misunderstandings around a well-known name”
― Gregory Benford, Foundation's Fear

“The universe of artifacts was a human one.”
― Gregory Benford, Timescape: A Novel

“Remembering a narrative alters it.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“A big slice of the strange, a zap to the synaptic net, the shock of unending Otherness moistened with meaning, special stinks, grace notes, blaring daylight that illuminated without instructing. A marathon that addicted.
To wake up from cold sleep and go into that, fresh from the gewgaws and flashy bubble gum of techno-Earth, was – well, a consummation requiring digestion.
She could see that Redwing worried at this, could not let it go. Neither could she. Vexing thoughts came, flying strange and fragrant through her mind, but they were not problems, no. They were the shrapnel you carried, buried deep, wounds from meeting the strange.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“Yet how could the Empire possibly have kept itself stable, using such crude creatures as humans?”
― Gregory Benford, Foundation's Fear

“It is better to be wrong than to be vague. In trial and error, the error is the true essential. —FREEMAN DYSON”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar

“Flattery isn’t the highest compliment – parasitism is.”
― Gregory Benford, Shipstar