Tim > Tim's Quotes

“Everything is darkest," Xaphen mused, "before the dawn."

"That, my brother, is an axiom that sounds immensely profound until you realize it's a lie.”
― Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The First Heretic

“I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die.”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“The heart of wisdom is tolerance. I think.”
― Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

“to the everlasting glory of the infantry, shines the name, shines the name of Rodger Young!”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.”
― James S.A. Corey, Abaddon's Gate

“Optimism expressed as conservation of delta V.”
― James S.A. Corey, Abaddon's Gate

“Stars are better off without us.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

“I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That's where they get you. Humans are too fucking stupid to listen.”
― James S.A. Corey, Abaddon’s Gate

“Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don't walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don't know how to describe it, but it's much more complex and utterly delightful. They don't move just their feet; everything moves and in different directions . . . and all of it graceful.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part...and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Let's skip [Mobile Infantry] tradition for a moment. Can you think of anything sillier than being fired out of a spaceship with nothing but mayhem and sudden death at the other end? However, if someone must do this idiotic stunt, do you know a surer way to keep a man keyed up to the point where he is willing than by keeping him constantly reminded that the only good reason why men fight is a living, breathing reality?
"In a mixed ship [men and women] the last thing a trooper hears before a drop (maybe the last word he ever hears) is a woman's voice, wishing him luck. If you don't think this is important you've probably resigned from the human race.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“A boy who gets a C- in 'Appreciation of Television' can't be all bad.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“To the everlasting glory of the Infantry—”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“The universe will let us know—later—whether or not Man has any “right” to expand through it. In”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“An infantryman can fight only if somebody else delivers him to his zone; in a way I suppose pilots are just as essential as we are.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Upon the occasion of history's first manned flight - in the 1780's aboard the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air balloons - someone asked Franklin what use he saw in such frivolity. "What use," he replied, "is a newborn baby?”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“He had used drugs and nanonic supplements to compensate at first, then supplements became replacements, with bones exchanged for carbon-fibre struts. Electrical consumption supplanted food intake. The final transition was his skin, replacing the eczema-ridden epidermis with a smooth ochre silicon membrane. Warlow didn’t need a spacesuit to work in the vacuum, he could survive for over three weeks without a power and oxygen recharge. His facial features had become purely cosmetic, a crude mannequin-like caricature of human physiognomy, although there was an inlet valve at the back of his throat for fluid intake. There was no hair, and he certainly didn’t bother with clothes. Sex was something he lost in his fifties.”
― Peter F. Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction

“Last man standing," Amos replied with another grin. "It's in my job description.”
― James S.A. Corey, Cibola Burn

“The mechanic had laid out two suits of their Martian-made light combat armour, a number of rifles and shotguns, and stacks of ammunition and explosives.
“What,” Holden said, “is all this?”
“You said to gear up for the drop.”
“I meant, like, underwear and toothbrushes.”
― James S.A. Corey, Cibola Burn

“If life transcends death

Then I will seek for you there

If not, then there too”
― James S.A. Corey, Caliban’s War

“People always whispered when they were hiding. Wrapped in a space suit and surrounded by vacuum, Gomez could have been lighting fireworks inside his armor and no one would have heard it, but he whispered.”
― James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

“What did you do?” Fred asked. “There was a button,” Holden said. “I pushed it.” “Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn’t it?”
― James S.A. Corey, Nemesis Games

“No, it wasn’t. It was the scariest fucking answer to Fermi’s paradox I can think of. Do you know why there aren’t any Indians in your Old West analogy? Because they’re already dead. The whatever-they-were that built all that got a head start and used their protomolecule gate builder to kill all the rest. And that’s not even the scary part. The really frightening part is that something else came along, shot the first guys in the back of the head, and left their corpses scattered across the galaxy. The thing we should be asking is, who fired the magic bullet?”
― James S.A. Corey, Nemesis Games

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need.

First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.

Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.

Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear