Patrick Anderson

“I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows. In my mind are all the halls, the endless procession of them, the intricate pathways. When this world becomes too much for me, when I grow tired of the noise and the dirt and the people, I close my eyes and I name a particular vestibule to myself; then I name a hall.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“Don't ask me who's the father of the H-bomb, because nobody is.... The whole thing was a matter of people putting ideas into a pot around a coffee cable. Somebody had an idea and that doesn't work, but they give me an idea, but that doesn't work, but you can give me an idea. Because they were beating one idea against another around a table, in front of a black board and so on. It wasn't anybody's real invention; it was just a lot of people working on it.... Eventually an idea appeared, which looked as if it might work, and for which the technology for the (primary) was reasonably available. Not completely, but could be gotten together pretty fast if you put some more work on that.... It's a very complicated technical question.”
― Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

“Fundamentally, and in the long run, the problem which is posed by the release of atomic energy is a problem of the ability of the human race to govern itself without war. There is no permanent method of excising atomic energy from our affairs, now that men know how it can be released. Even if some reasonably complete international control of atomic energy should be established, knowledge would persist, and it is hard to see how there could be any major war in which one side or another would not eventually make and use atomic bombs. In this respect the problem of armaments was permanently and drastically altered in 1945.

The world will not soon be free of nuclear weapons, because they sene so many purposes. But as instruments of destruction, they have long been obsolete.”
― Richard Rhodes