Liu Cixin Quotes

It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.

Now, faced with political cases like yours, all prosecutorial organs and courts would rather be too severe than too lax. This is because treating you too severely would just be a mistake in method, but treating you too laxly would be a mistake in political direction.

I'm a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass.

The biggest barrier to reanimating a flash-frozen body is preventing cell damage from ice crystals during the process. It's like what happens to frozen tofu: When you defrost it, it turns into a sponge. Oh, I guess most of you haven't head frozen tofu.' The expert, who was Chinese, smiled at the confused Western faces around him.

But burning was their fate; they were the generation meant to be consumed by fire.

By the time you're my age, you'll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.

There were few things that it needed to remember forever, and those were etched by its genes into the storage area known as instinct. Having

The only way to escape this fate was to mate with a member of the opposite sex. When that happened, the organic material making up their bodies would meld into one. Two-thirds of the material would then become fuel to power the biochemical reaction that would completely renew the cells in the remaining one-third and create a new body. Then this body would divide into three to five tiny new lives: their children. They would inherit some of the memories of their parents, continue their lives, and begin the cycle of life anew.

But one always awoke from a dream, just like the sun - which, though it would rise again, brought no fresh hope.

there was little significance in their conversation, just father and son taking a verbal stroll together. The

We're going to advance! Advance! We'll stop at nothing to advance!

But for this mass struggle session, the victims were the reactionary bourgeois academic authorities. These were the enemies of every faction, and they had no choice but to endure cruel attacks from every side.

The fundamental axiom of economics is the human mercenary instinct. Without

The experience of high-dimensional spatial sense was a spiritual baptism. In one moment, concepts like freedom, openness, profundity, and infinity all gained brand-new meanings.

The fish responsible for drying the sea are not here.

Intellectuals always make a fuss about nothing.

No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.

But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble, moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct.

This is utter crap!It's enough to put up big-character posters everywhere on the ground, but we should not send them into space.

The universe is grand, but life is grander. We're certain to meet again.

The universe is but a corpse puffing up.

If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything.

Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.

We extend our best wishes to you, inhabitants of another world.

After reading the following message, you should have a basic understanding of civilization on Earth. By dint of long toil and creativity, the human race has built a splendid civilization, blossoming with a multitude of diverse cultures. We have also begun to understand the laws governing the natural world and the development of human societies. We cherish all that we have accomplished.

But our world is still flawed. Hate exists, as does prejudice and war. Because of conflicts between the forces of production and the relations of production, wealth distribution is extremely uneven, and large portions of humanity live in poverty and misery.

Human societies are working hard to resolve the difficulties and problems they face, striving to create a better future for Earth civilization.The country that sent this message is engaged in this effort. We are dedicated to building an ideal society, where the labor and value of every member of the human race are fully respected, where everyone's material and spiritual needs are fully met, so that civilization on Earth may become more perfect.

With the best of intentions, we look forward to establishing contact with other civilized societies in the universe. We look forward to working together with you to build a better life in this vast universe.

That's right. Five minutes into the all-hands meeting, the fundamental values of this totalitarian society had received the support of the vast majority of the crew. So, let me tell you, when humans are lost in space, it takes only five minutes to reach totalitarianism. Boris

As soon as we increase the dimensionality of this proton, it will become very small.

even in the face of the devastating Trisolar Crisis, the unity of the human race is still a distant dream. The

She said, "Your approach is wrong. You're writing an essay rather than creating a literary figure. What a literary character does in ten minutes might be a reflection of ten years' experience. You can't be limited to the plot of a novel - you've got to imagine her entire life, and what actually gets put into words is just the tip of the iceberg." So

Science fiction is a literature of possibilities.

Mere existence is already the result of incredible luck. Such was the case on Earth in the past, and such has always been the case in this cruel universe. But at some point, humanity began to develop the illusion that they're entitled to life, that life can be taken for granted.

Even if God were here, it wouldn't do any good. The entire human race has reached the point where no one is listening to their prayers.

Make time for civilization, for civilization won't make time.

In this world, can everyone be dehydrated and rehydrated?

The greatest mystery in the universe is right in front of us. The answers to all our cosmological questions may be found here. How can we leave?!

Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind. It portrays events of interest to all of humanity, and thus science fiction should be the literary genre most accessible to readers of different nations. Science fiction often describes a day when humanity will form a harmonious whole, and I believe the arrival of such a day need not wait for the appearance of extraterrestrials.

it was not a good idea for the human race as a whole to make contact with extraterrestrials. The impact of such contact on human society would be divisive rather than uniting, and would exacerbate rather than mitigate the conflicts between different cultures. In summary, if contact were to occur, the internal divisions within Earth civilization would be magnified and likely lead to disaster.

He lacked the ability to thrive in society, but also the resources to ignore it. All he could do was hang on to the edge, suffering.

Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.

The fate of the entire human race was now tied to these slender fingers. Without hesitation, Ye pressed the button.

It's easy to make ideological mistakes in theory.

Life shouldn't be a lifetime of waiting.

I know you can't. Because you're too kind. It's very simple. The attacker must first transform themselves into life forms that can survive in a low-dimensional universe. For instance, a four-dimensional species can transform itself into three-dimensional creatures, or a three-dimensional species can transform itself into two-dimensional life. After the entire civilization has entered a lower dimension, they can initiate a dimensional strike against the enemy without concern for the consequences." Cheng

One night, Ye was working the night shift. This was the loneliest time. In the deep silence of midnight, the universe revealed itself to its listeners as a vast desolation. What Ye disliked most was seeing the waves that slowly crawled across the display, a visual record of the meaningless noise Red Coast picked up from space. Ye felt this interminable wave was an abstract view of the universe: one end connected to the endless past, the other to the endless future, and in the middle only the ups and downs of random chance - without life, without pattern, the peaks and valleys at different heights like uneven grains of sand, the whole curve like a one-dimensional desert made of all the grains of sand lined up in a row, lonely, desolate, so long that it was intolerable. You could follow it and go forward or backward as long as you liked, but you'd never find the end.

It's easy to be led to the abyss.

Child, the moon is very lovely tonight. I just saw a kangaroo. I guess the refugees hadn't eaten them all.

Time is the one thing that can't be stopped. Like a sharp blade, it silently cuts through hard and soft, constantly advancing. Nothing is capable of jolting it even the slightest bit, but it changes everything.

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. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost, leaving him with little in the end.

Though the person could not see the potential lover's face or figure, the knowledge that the other person existed somewhere in the distance created lovely fantasies about the potential lover that spread like wildfire.

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.

unscientific ways of thinking will dominate scientific thinking among human intellectuals, and lead to the collapse of the entire scientific system of thought.

Earth civilization had a way to transmit at the level of a Kardashev Type II civilization.

He stood on the ice, his teeth chattering in the cold, a cold that seemed to come not from the lake water or icy wind, but from a direct transmission from outer space.

As a science fiction writer who began as a fan, I do not use my fiction as a disguised way to criticize the reality of the present. I feel that the greatest appeal of science fiction is the creation of numerous imaginary worlds outside of reality. I've always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.

The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang. The three-billion-year history of life's evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics … these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction. Through the medium of science fiction, I seek only to create my own worlds using the power of imagination, and to make known the poetry of Nature in those worlds, to tell the romantic legends that have unfolded between Man and Universe.

Indeed, it is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains. They all want to stand on ever higher ground to gaze ever farther into the distance. It is a drive completely divorced from the demands of survival.

Unlike other human religions, they worshipped something that truly existed. Also unlike other human religions, it was the Lord who was in crisis, and the duty of salvation fell on the shoulders of the believer.

The reason evolution bestows all intelligent life with a desire to climb higher is far more profound than more base needs, even though we still do not understand its real purpose. Mountains are universal and we are all standing at the feet of mountains.

A civilization that cannot see the sun and stars will be without religion. There

Afterwards, the princeps asked the science consul, "Did we destroy a civilization in the microcosmos in this experiment?" "It was at least an intelligent body. Also, Princeps, we destroyed the entire microcosmos. That miniature universe is immense in higher dimensions, and it probably contained more than one intelligence or civilization that never had a chance to express themselves in macro space. Of course, in higher dimensional space at such micro scales, the form that intelligence or civilization may take is beyond our imagination. They're something else entirely. And such destruction has probably occurred many times before." "Oh?" "In the long history of scientific progress, how many protons have been smashed apart in accelerators by physicists? How many neutrons and electrons? Probably no fewer than a hundred million. Every collision was probably the end of the civilizations and intelligences in a microcosmos.

Should could no longer feel grief. She was now like a Geiger counter that had been subjected to too much radiation, no longer capable of giving any reaction, noiselessly displaying a reading of zero.

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 fly-swatter 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.

Zero dimensions! Have you seen such a thing done?" "No. We've only witnessed two-dimensionalization. We've never even seen one-dimensionalization. But somewhere, some Zero-Homers must be trying. No one knows if they've ever succeeded. Comparatively, it's easier to lower the speed of light to zero, so we've seen more evidence of such attempts to lower the speed of light past zero and return it to infinity." "Is that even theoretically possible?" "We don't know. Maybe the Zero-Homers have theories that say yes, but I don't think so. Zero-lightspeed is an impassable wall. Zero-lightspeed is absolute death for all existence, the cessation of all motion. Under such conditions, the subjective cannot influence the objective in any way, so how can the 'hour hand' be shifted past it? I think the Zero-Homers are practicing a kind of religion, a kind of performance art." Cheng

The brevity of a human lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers. *

In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong.

The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical:

Right then, at the frequency of 12000 MHz, the sun was the brightest star in the entire Milky Way.

For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It's as simple as that. You differ from the majority in one respect: You didn't need a template.

Wang walked past the three happily playing children and entered the room that Ye had indicated. He paused in front of the door, seized by a strange feeling. It was as if he had returned to his dream-filled youth. From the depths of his memory arose a tingling sadness, fragile and pure like morning dew, tinged with a rosy hue. Gently,

The universe had once been bright, too. For a short time after the big bang, all matter existed in the form of light, and only after the universe turned to burnt ash did heavier elements precipitate out of the darkness and form planets and life. Darkness was the mother of life and of civilization. On Earth, an avalanche of curses and abuse rolled out into space toward Blue Space and Bronze Age, but the two ships made no reply. They cut off all contact with the Solar System, for to those two worlds, the Earth was already dead. The two dark ships became one with the darkness, separated by the Solar System and drifting further apart. Carrying with them the entirety of human thoughts and memories, and embracing all of the Earth's glory and dreams, they quietly disappeared into the eternal night.

There are no permanent enemies or comrades, only permanent duty.

Once the slogans died down, the girl shouted, "God does not exist. All religions are tools concocted by the ruling class to paralyze the spirit of the people!

Let's go drinking and then go back to sleep like good bugs.

Life reached an evolutionary milestone when it climbed onto land from the ocean, but those first fish that climbed onto land ceased to be fish.

Saving a species of bird or insect is no different from saving humankind. 'All lives are equal' is the basic tenet of Pan-Species Communism.

Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it. There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years.

We'll send only a brain," he said.

when humans are lost in space, it takes only five minutes to reach totalitarianism.

A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.

The child that was human civilization had opened the door to her home and glanced outside. The endless night terrified her so much that she shuddered against the expansive and profound darkness, and shut the door firmly.

Existence is the premise for everything else.

Life and the world were perhaps ugly, but at the limits of the micro and macro scales, everything was harmonious and beautiful. The

You know how the joke goes: On the way to the execution ground, a condemned criminal complained that it was going to rain, and the executioner said, 'What have you got to worry about? We're the ones who've got to go back through it!

I've always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.

Evans: We don't know what extraterrestrial civilization is like, but we know humanity.

This is the difference between an ordinary scribe and a literary writer. The highest level of literary creation is when the characters in a novel possess life in the mind of the writer. The writer is unable to control them, and might not even be able to predict the next action they will take. We can only follow them in wonder to observe and record the minute details of their lives like a voyeur.

the thoughts she could not voice dissolved into her blood, where they would stay with her for the rest of her life. After

As soon as Wang left the Research Center building, the nightmarelike feeling caught up to him. He felt like the starry sky was a magnifying glass that covered the world, and he was a tiny insect below the lens with nowhere to hide.

Can the fundamental nature of matter really be lawlessness? Can the stability and order of the world be but a temporary dynamic equilibrium achieved in a corner of the universe, a short-lived eddy in a chaotic current?

If so, I'll just hold the umbrella up for you forever.

Although the method is simple, it shows how, mathematically, random brute force can overcome precise logic. It's a numerical approach that uses quantity to derive quality.

Whatever they were dealing with was too important for them to care about keeping up appearances.

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.

The false alarm was the result of the explosive amplifying effects of a hyper-information society when fed sensitive news.

Of course she's not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.

Of course," said Guan Yifan. "The great universe isn't going to fail to collapse because it misses five kilograms." He had another thought that he did not voice: Perhaps the great universe really would fail to collapse because it lacked a single atom's mass. The precision of Nature can sometimes exceed the imagination. For instance, life itself required the precise collaboration of various universal constants within a billion-billionth of a certain range.

The universe is a hollow sphere floating in the middle of a sea of fire. There are numerous tiny holes in the surface of the sphere, as well as a large one. The light from the sea of flames shines through these holes. The tiny ones are stars, and the large one is the sun.

Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?

The key is to set up some rules: which combinations of motion vectors are "healthy" and "beneficial," and which combinations are "detrimental" and "harmful." The former receive a survival advantage while the latter are disfavored.

These days, they use so much pesticide that when I feed the children, I have to soak the vegetables for at least two hours.

Why are you all like this?" Evans suddenly became furious. "Why does one have to save people to be considered a hero? Why is saving other species considered insignificant? Who gave humans such high honors? No, humans do not need saving. They're already living much better than they deserve.

Cheng Xin now recalled the strange feeling she had experienced each time she had looked at Van Gogh's painting. Everything else in the painting - the trees that seemed to be on fire, and the village and mountains at night - showed perspective and depth, but the starry sky above had no three-dimensionality at all, like a painting hanging in space. Because the starry night was two-dimensional. How could Van Gogh have painted such a thing in 1889? Did he, having suffered a second breakdown, truly leap across five centuries