Cody Conroy

“Our guess is that machines capable enough to be useful interstellar explorers are necessarily so complex as to be vulnerable to mutation in their programs,” Dayan said. “They need not visit a nova. Sooner or later, if nothing else, cosmic radiation will do it. Generally, they lose their ‘wits’ and just drift on aimlessly forever. Probably no line of von Neumanns gets beyond a few hundred light-years before it goes effectively extinct.”
― Poul Anderson, Starfarers

“You cannot go back into the past and change what has happened, no matter what you do. But your actions can be a part of what did happen.”
― Poul Anderson, Starfarers

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“The more you invest in a set of beliefs—the greater the sacrifice you make in the service of that conviction—the more resistant you will be to evidence that suggests that you are mistaken. You don’t give up. You double down.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War