Wei Zang > Wei's Quotes

“If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic

“The small boys came early to the hanging.”
― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

“If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the result of the marksman’s momentary whim for an unalterable law of the universe. The farmer hypothesis, on the other hand, has the flavor of a horror story: Every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold without change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: “Every morning at eleven, food arrives.” On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at eleven, food doesn’t arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“I’m a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Make time for civilization, for civilization won't make time.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“By the time you’re my age, you’ll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Without the fear of heights, there can be no appreciation for the beauty of high places.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“No,no.Don't say where we are!Once we know where we are,then the world becomes as narrow as a map.When we don't know,the world feels unlimited.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Anything sufficiently weird must be fishy.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a flyswatter under it… this long war has been going on for the entire history of human civilization. But the outcome is still in doubt. The bugs have not been eliminated. They still proudly live between the heavens and the earth, and their numbers have not diminished from the time before the appearance of the humans. The Trisolarans who deemed the humans bugs seemed to have forgotten one fact: The bugs have never been truly defeated. A small black cloud covered the sun and cast a moving shadow against the ground. This was not a common cloud, but a swarm of locusts that had just arrived. As the swarm landed in the fields nearby, the three men stood in the middle of a living shower, feeling the dignity of life on Earth. Ding Yi and Wang Miao poured the two bottles of wine they had with them on the ground beneath their feet, a toast for the bugs.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Even Coca-Cola probably tasted medicinal the first time you tried it. Anything addictive is like that.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Young people are all the same. The more books you read, the more confused you become.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Some call them doomsday ships. These lightspeed ships have no destination at all. They turn their curvature engines to maximum and accelerate like crazy, infinitely approaching the speed of light. Their goal is to leap across time using relativity until they reach the heat death of the universe. By their calculations, ten years within their frame of reference would equal fifty billion years in ours. As a matter of fact, you don’t even need to plan for it. If some malfunction occurs after a ship has accelerated to lightspeed, preventing the ship from decelerating, then you’d also reach the end of the universe within your lifetime.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“Have you heard of the Monte Carlo method? Ah, it’s a computer algorithm often used for calculating the area of irregular shapes. Specifically, the software puts the figure of interest in a figure of known area, such as a circle, and randomly strikes it with many tiny balls, never targeting the same spot twice. After a large number of balls, the proportion of balls that fall within the irregular shape compared to the total number of balls used to hit the circle will yield the area of the shape. Of course, the smaller the balls used, the more accurate the result.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“The universe is but a corpse puffing up.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“English, formerly the most widely used language, and Chinese, spoken by the largest population, had blended with each other without distinction to become the world’s most powerful language. Luo Ji learned later that the other languages of the world were undergoing the same fusion.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“It’s easy to make ideological mistakes in theory.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Killing one person was murder; killing a few or dozens was ore murder; so killing thousands or tens of thousands ought to be punished by putting the murderer to death a thousand times. What about more than that? a few hundred thousand? The death penalty, right? Yet, those of you who know some history are starting to hesitate.

What if he killed millions? I can guarantee you such a person would not be considered a murderer. Indeed, such a person may not even be thought to have broken any law. If you don't believe me, just study history! Anyone who has killed millions is deemed a 'great' man, a hero.

And if that person destroyed a whole world and killed every life on it--he would be hailed as a savior!”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“Everyone likes to reminisce, but not one wants to listen, and everyone feels annoyed when someone else tells a story.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“Do not answer! Do not answer!! Do not answer!!!”
― Liu Cixin, Remembrance of Earth's Past: The Three-Body Trilogy

“Even a fish can be used to commit a crime. I handled a murder case once. Some bitch cut off her husband’s family jewels. You know what she used? A frozen tilapia she got out of the freezer! The spines along the back were like razors—”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“If you were to make a meatball out of humankind, its diameter would be less than a kilometer.”
― Liu Cixin, Hold Up the Sky

“Mom, I'm going to be a firefly.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Successful cooperation does not equate to successful understanding.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“If even an extremely simple arrangement like the three-body system is unpredictable chaos, how can we have any faith in discovering the laws of the complicated universe?”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem