Peter Cawdron > Peter's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“2 + 2 = 5”
― George Orwell, 1984

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

“In the age of information, ignorance is a choice.”
― Donny Miller

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson

“People don't hate each other. They hate each other's ideas.”
― Nick Cole, The Old Man and the Wasteland

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― Andre Gide

“Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.”
― Edwin Hubble

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else...But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“What the hell are you getting so upset about?' he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrive amusement. 'I thought you didn't believe in God.'
I don't,' she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. 'But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him to be.'
Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. 'Let's have a little more religious freedom between us,' he proposed obligingly. 'You don't believe in the God you want to, and I won't believe in the God I want to . Is that a deal?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“It had been the mere plaything of nature, when first it crept out of uncreative void into light; but thought brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these, the race of man assumed dignity and authority. It was then no longer the mere gardener of earth, or the shepherd of her flocks; "it carried with it an imposing and majestic aspect; it had a pedigree and illustrious ancestors; it had its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records and titles.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man

“the best and most cost-effective way to control women for reproductive and other purposes was through women themselves. For this there were many historical precedents; in fact, no empire imposed by force or otherwise has ever been without this feature: control of the indigenous by members of their own group.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“It’s simple math, you know. Classic bell curve. Normal distribution. Most people are going to pile up in the middle, not going anywhere, but there’ll be a handful of outliers that go high and low, often for inexplicable reasons. Point is, even survivors don’t really understand why they survive—they just do.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“For every two steps we’ve taken in advancing our own civilization, we’ve stepped back at least once, embracing our primitive nature, becoming more efficient at killing, more adept at slaughtering each other. Is that the curse of intelligence? Is violence a universal constant?”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“If we ever make contact with another intelligent species out there, they’re going to scratch their heads at how utterly ridiculous we are with all the meaningless distinctions we make. Straight/Gay. Black/White. Male/Female. Rich/Poor. And what’s more, we use these to ignore the things that are really important—compassion, kindness, consideration.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“Dad was mercurial, swinging between extremes. Guilty and full of remorse one day, drunk as a skunk the next. I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. I could see the same traits welling up within me, and that scared me. I didn’t want to turn out like him. I was desperate to be better. Explains a lot about my life, really, but he had this poem hanging on the wall of our living room. I guess it was a prayer. Lord, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“Luck is never accommodating, right? Just a big smattering of probabilities that sometimes collide.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be.”
― Leo Buscaglia

“From there we came outside and saw the stars”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“In generations to come, Martian parents are going to hold their kid’s birthday parties on Phobos. It’ll be the inflatable bouncy castle of the 22nd century.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“Like most astronauts, I made the mistake of asking about safety during training. My instructor tried not to laugh. “The abort system produces eighteen to twenty gees as it catapults you the hell away from any fireball, but it’s a mixed blessing. How safe would it be to pile eighteen to twenty people directly on top of you? You’ll probably survive. Probably. But you won’t be walking away from an abort.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“you spend far more time planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how to cope with them, than you do for things to go right.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“Science is an attempt to remove our emotions and ego from reality.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“Humans might be difficult to transport between planets but seeds are ideal—small and lightweight. If only humans could be grown in-situ. One day, they will.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars

“Orbits are strange beasts. Rather than escaping the gravity of Mars, we’re surrendering to it, albeit at a speed and distance that allows us to fall around the planet. Like passengers in an elevator with the cable severed, we’re plummeting toward the ground, only we’re going sideways so fast we keep missing the planet.”
― Peter Cawdron, Losing Mars