Christopher L. Bennett > Quotes

“The people most reluctant to use weapons are the ones who can best be trusted with them.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Watching the Clock

“That is the past. It has already occurred. Its only existence now is as a source of wisdom and motivation. Learn from your pain, your guilt toward your past actions. Let it guide your choices in the future.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, The Higher Frontier

“Laypeople. They think everything in the past happened at the same time.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, The Collectors

“The best we can do is take the history we have and deal with it.”
― Christopher L. Bennett

“life is about living, not just surviving. Nobody gets out of it alive in the end, so we just have to make the most of the time we get.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“Are we solving a problem, or manufacturing a problem to fit our solution?”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“The only thing our choices can affect or change is the future. So it seems to me that the future is where our attention can be most usefully directed.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“history is replete with groups motivated by violent hatred toward others for arbitrary or incomprehensible reasons. For some”
― Christopher L. Bennett, The Higher Frontier

“There are constraints on freedom, but only to the extent that different individuals’ freedoms come into conflict. It is the responsibility of the state to moderate those conflicts equitably.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Tower of Babel

“TUVOK!” The lights were gone, only the emergency illumination remaining, but it was enough to let Deanna see that the Vulcan was sprawled motionless on the floor beneath the office table, his head coated in something dark and glistening. She couldn’t see color, but she knew it was green. “Oh, God.” She struck her combadge. “Medical emergency, Counselor Troi’s office!” Maybe emergencies, she thought as she felt her insides heave and she vomited up her last meal onto the carpet. She couldn’t tell through the inner turbulence if the baby was still kicking. “Sickbay, acknowledge!” Nothing. “Computer!” She began dragging herself toward Tuvok. “Where are you, you stupid computer?” But that voice, the one that reminded her so maddeningly of her mother, remained silent. “Somebody!”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Over a Torrent Sea

“Sometimes, Thanien, you simply have to stop letting the past define your life and live for the future instead.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“Aggression in the name of defense provokes its own reflection.’ Employing intimidation as a means to subdue an enemy usually backfires, making them more aggressive rather than less.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“DTI Headquarters, Greenwich 10:41 UTC Director Laarin Andos sat at the desk in her underground office, her legs straddling Earth’s Prime Meridian. Across from her sat two of her top agents, Dulmur in the Western Hemisphere, Ranjea in the Eastern. It was, of course, a completely arbitrary distinction, but it brought Andos some comfort. Her Rhaandarite people had a strong sense of spatial as well as social orientation, and in her position it was reassuring to feel herself physically anchored by the centrality of her location. Although”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Watching the Clock

“Experience doesn’t always make you smarter. Sometimes it just makes you think you know everything.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Watching the Clock

“The Gum Nebula was one of the largest astronomical landmarks in the Orion Arm. It was a gigantic supernova remnant, a shock front from the death of a star over a million years in the past.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Orion's Hounds

“Exactly,” T’Pol said. “Surak wrote of this in the Kir’Shara. ‘Aggression in the name of defense provokes its own reflection.’ Employing intimidation as a means to subdue an enemy usually backfires, making them more aggressive rather than less.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“The past anchors us, cousin. It gives us a place to stand. You can’t hide from it because it hurts. That pain tells you who you are. It demands recognition.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“The cat’s soft appearance is deceptive,” Worf had told her in a recent letter. “Spot is in fact fierce, cunning, uncompromising, and supremely self-assured. What she wants, she demands, or simply takes. She has the heart of a warrior,” he had concluded—high praise indeed from him.)”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Orion's Hounds

“A life without truth is illogical. Surak wrote that the truth is simply the actual state of the universe. To live at odds with the truth is to be in conflict with reality itself. Such an existence is unsustainable.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Tower of Babel

“They worship machine logic above all, advocate a rigid way of life in which people are ruled by a computer’s calculations… a lot like Beta III was under Landru, in fact. We’ve had cultists come to the Federation consulate and pray to our mainframe.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Ex Machina

“It’s the ones who don’t blame themselves who are more likely to be guilty of wrongdoing.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, The Buried Age

“You could always go back to school,” Louise said. “You’re never too old to learn.” “But there’s just so much. Not just this world, but so many others. By the time I got caught up, I would be too old.” “To spend the rest of your life learning?” Louise asked, shaking her head in wonderment. “What could be better than that?” Such a twenty-fourth-century attitude, Clare thought.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Watching the Clock

“Rather,” Soval replied, “the people mutually consent to abide by those rules for their own collective benefit. They ensure their own safety and liberty by agreeing to respect others’ safety and liberty—even when that requires making compromises. Absolute, unfettered freedom is only possible for one who lives absolutely alone. When one is part of a community, one must balance one’s own freedoms and rights with those of others.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Tower of Babel

“Or, as a famous human jurist once said, ‘The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins,’ ” Archer added.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Tower of Babel

“The bitch thought herself and her cronies worthy to exist on such a divine plane, as though she were better than the decent, pious, hardworking people she’d turned her back on. And those Fedraysha blasphemers, who hunted down gods and killed them wherever they found them—on Yonada, on Beta, on Avros, on Gamma Trianguli—they took advantage of her hubris, used her as their puppet to spread their evils, to destroy every vestige of the Yonadan way of life as they had destroyed the Oracle.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Ex Machina

“Lucsly glanced back. “That’s just it. I’m not supposed to know.” He paused. “A history of race hatred . . . a self-serving demagogue stirring up new resentments for his own ends . . . you don’t need time travel to predict where that’s heading. It’s up”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Shield of the Gods

“He smiled more warmly and clasped her hand. “Kirk,” he said. “Samuel Abraham Kirk.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, A Choice of Futures

“So how do you preserve such freedom,” Zehron countered, “if the state itself coerces the people to follow its rules?”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Tower of Babel

“There can’t be true freedom for anybody . . . unless they have freedom from fear. Unless they know their right to live, to choose, to love, and to hold on to their possessions won’t be taken from them by force, whether by a government or by other people. In any free system, there have to be some basic standards of behavior that everyone agrees to abide by, some basic protection for their lives and their rights—and they have to agree to empower somebody with the authority to enforce those standards if anyone violates that social contract. It’s not enough just to trust the marketplace to balance everything out. You can see that isn’t working.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Tower of Babel

“Agent Shelan wondered if it would really hurt diplomatic relations with the Klingon Empire all that much if she tossed Korath, Son of Monak, into an antimatter reactor. Surely if anyone would recognize homicide as a valid response to intolerable annoyance, it would be the Klingons.”
― Christopher L. Bennett, Watching the Clock