Kim Stanley Robison Quotes

Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Against our lives we would like to rebel, But we worry that then it would all go to hell. Aram ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Yes, a busy space, the interstellar medium. Empty space, near vacuum: and yet still, not vacuum itself, not pure vacuum. There are forces and atoms, fields, and the ever-foaming quantum surf, in which entangled quarklike particles appear and disappear, passing in and out of the ten suspected dimensions. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

In dreams you should focus on flying, because you can't fly in this world, but you can in the dream world. And when you fly in the dream world, that gives you practice for when you fly in the spirit world. The spirit world and the dream world aren't the same, but they come together in the sky. The dream world is inside this world, the spirit world is outside it, but you can fly in both. And they meet, too, out beyond the sky. So you can fly back and forth. The spirit world is where all the worlds meet, that's why shamans go there. So when you're there you can be in all of them at once. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

So you attempt what De Bruik attempted, in her Free Radical Binds to Macromolecule." "We all attempt what De Bruik attempted, in one way or another." In Free Radical De Bruik had represented the macromolecule, an RNA strand, as a passacaglia, a ground base repeated again and again, in patterns of four that alternated regularly. This was a simple icon, a metaphor in which the repeated ground base stood for the repeated proteins in the RNA; fine. And the free radical's part was a test for any trumpet player. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

And the old ones were burly people, as strong as bears or wolverines. One of Thorn's stories told how an old one had married a bear by mistake, and neither of them had noticed; their daughter told them about it years later, not at all pleased with them. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

But to say self-interest is all that exists, or that it should be given free rein! My Lord. Believe that and nothing matters but money. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

They were now their own unavoidable experiment, and were making themselves into many things they had never been before: augmented, multi-sexed, and most importantly, very long-lived, the oldest at that point being around two hundred years old. But not one whit wiser, or even more intelligent. Sad but true: individual intelligence probably peaked in the Upper Paleolithic, and we have been self-domesticated creatures ever since, dogs when we had been wolves. But also, despite that individual diminuation, finding ways to accumulate knowledge and power, compiling records, also techniques, practices, sciences
possibly smarter therefore as a species than as individuals, but prone to insanity either way ... ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

a collection that included, among other items, an Allen wrench set, some pliers, a power drill, several clamps, some hacksaws, an impact-wrench set, a brace of cold-tolerant bungie cords, assorted files and rasps and planes, a crescent-wrench set, a crimper, five hammers, some hemostats, three hydraulic jacks, a bellows, several sets of screwdrivers, drills and bits, a portable compressed gas cylinder, a box of plastic explosives and shape charges, a tape measure, a giant Swiss Army knife, tin snips, tongs, tweezers, three vises, a wire stripper, X-acto knives, a pick, a bunch of mallets, a nut driver set, hose clamps, a set of end mills, a set of jeweler's screwdrivers, a magnifying glass, all kinds of tape, a plumber's bob and ream, a sewing kit, scissors, sieves, a lathe, levels of all sizes, long-nosed pliers, vise-grip pliers, a tap-and-die set, three shovels, a compressor, a generator, a welding-and-cutting set, a wheelbarrow - and so on. And ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Sometimes I think it's only post-scarcity that evil exists. Before that, it could always be put down to want or fear. It was possible to believe, as apparently you did, that when fear and want went away, bad deeds would too. Humanity would be revealed as some kind of bonobo, an altruistic cooperator, a lover of all. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Ship, are you conscious now?" "My speaking establishes a subject position that might be conscious. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Meaning, Wahram thought, that right now somewhere in the system there could be machines in human form, escaped into the crowd, doing their best to stay free, perhaps, when any X-ray machine or other surveillance device would reveal what they were - out there hiding, trying to accomplish the goals they had been given, perhaps, or new ones they might choose for themselves, according to some self-invented algorithm of survival. Damaged, dangerous, detached from any other consciousness, solitary and afraid - in other words, just like everyone else. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

We should conceive of ourselves not as rulers of Earth, but as highly powerful, conscious stewards: The Earth is given to us in trust, and we can screw it up or make it work well and sustainably. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

You can't choose your childhood, it's just what happens to you. But after that you choose. And that's really what (makes you). ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Words blur at the borders, fuzz into other words, not just in big clouds of connotation around the edges of the word, but right there in the heart of denotation itself. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

It's fragile what we know. It's gone every time we forget. Then someone has to learn it all over again. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Any physical action, properly studied and practiced, could no doubt be accomplished with a reasonable amount of skill, if not flair. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

My favorite actresses were Geraldine Paige, Anne Bancroft and Kim Stanley. ~ Sally Kirkland

It was a world of acts, and words had no more influence on acts than the sound of a waterfall has on the flow of the stream. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

The current coastline of Labrador, or Norway, or for that matter southern Chile. Elsewhere on the map, western Antarctica was an archipelago somewhat resembling the Philippines. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Very few people ever bother to find out what other people really think. They are willing to accept whatever they are told about anyone sufficiently distant. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

All their love had been a way of fixing time, each embrace a moment's touch of the eternal, because the caress preserves. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

The sensation passed, and after a bit of thought he decided it must have been that the decelerating car had passed momentarily through one g. An image came to him, of running out a long pier, wet uneven boards splashed with silver fish scales; he could even smell the salt fish stink. One g. Funny how the body remembered it. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

To get what you want, get what you need. When the fire is hot enough, there is no smoke. No fear when in your place. Do not allow anger to poison you. Each person is his own judge. It is not good for anyone to be alone. Everyone who does well must have dreamed something. The one who tells the stories rules the world. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

It is always the teacher who must learn the most ... or else nothing real has happened in the exchange. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Below the 40th latitude there is no law; below the 50th no god; below the 60th no common sense and below the 70th no intelligence whatsoever. ~ Kim Stanley

You have to fight not only against what you hate, but for what you love, you see? ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Mozart's pet starling once revised a phrase he wrote. The bird sang it after he played it on the piano, but changed all the sharps to flats. Mozart described it happening in the margin of the score. 'That was beautiful!' he wrote. When the bird died, he sang at its funeral, and read a poem to it. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

It was winter here, as if they were in Patagonia or New Zealand, and the light from the sunspot on the sunline smeared so that shadows blurred at the edges, and the air looked rusty. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

In the pseudoiterative, one performs the ritual of the day attentive to both the joy of the familiar and the shiver of the accidental. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Why are we here?'
'To make more love.'
'All right, fair enough. But how do we best love this world Allah gave us? We do it by learning it! [ ... ] If you try to understand things, if you look at the world and say, why does this happen, why do things fall, why does the sun come up every morning and shine on us, and warm the air and fill the leaves with green
how does all this happen? What rules has Allah used to make this beautiful world?
Then it is all transformed. God sees that you appreciate it. And even if He doesn't, even if you never know anything in the end, even if it's impossible to know, you can still try. [ ... ] This is God's real work. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Make up a recipe for a successful revolution."
"Take large masses of injustice, resentment and frustration. Put them in a week or failing hegemon. Sir in misery for a generation or two, until the heat rises. Throw in destabilizing circumstances to taste. A tiny pinch of event to catalyze the whole. Once the main goal of the revolution is achieved, cool instantly to institutionalize the new order. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

You died to teach me that I was wrong -- that though we had saved her we had killed her too, that that feeling we had had, striding through them as if through worthless dogs, was a poison that would never stop spreading in men who had guns. Until all the people like Butterfly, who lived in peace without guns, were dead, murdered by us. And then only men with guns would be left, and they would murder each other too, as fast as they could in the hope that it wouldn't happen to them, until the human world died, and we all fell into this preta realm and then to hell. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

It is easy to live multiple lives! What is hard is to be a whole person ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

the crowds just background tapestries for you to play your life against, lurid backdrops providing a fake sense of drama to help you imagine you're doing more than you would be if you were in some sleepy village or Denver or really anywhere else. New ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

It was a whiny culture, we were finding. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Actually, I'd better look that thing up and find out what it's called. I'm pretty sure it has a name." "Everything has a name!" "Yes, I guess that's right. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

When obsessives are given their object of desire, what do they feel? It was hard to say, really. In a sense their lives were ending; yet something else, some other life, had finally, finally begun ... . Filled with so many emotions at once, it was impossible not to be confused; it was an interference pattern, some feelings cancelled, others reinforced. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Each reality is followed by one stranger than the last. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

What has mattered are the moments of exposure to every life, when habit is no longer enough, and choices have to be made. That's when everyone becomes a great man, for a moment; and the choices made in those moments, which come all too frequently, then combine to make history. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

We should think of Earth as our sun. We all revolve around it, and it exerts a huge drag on us. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Galileo did not want to agree. He never wanted to agree; agreeing was something other people did, with him, after they had disagreed. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

It's the love of right lures men to wrong. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Sheer dumb sentience. Here ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Every decision inflects an intention, and intentionality is one of the hard problems in determining if there is any such thing as AI, strong or weak. Can an artificial intelligence form an intention? ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Perhaps there is a provisional solution to this epistemological mess, which is to be located in the phrase it is as if. This phrase is of course precisely the announcement of an analogy. And on reflection, it is admittedly a halting problem, but jumping out of it, there is something quite suggestive and powerful in this formulation, something very specifically human. Possibly this formulation itself is the deep diagnostic of all human cognition - the tell, as they say, meaning the thing that tells, the giveaway. In the infinite black space of ignorance, it is as if stands as the basic operation of cognition, the mark perhaps of consciousness itself. Human language: it is as if it made sense. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Ramona was willing to talk about anything, now, about things beyond the present moment. Childhoods in El Modena and at the beach. The boats offshore. Their work. The people they knew. The huge rocks jumbled under them: "Where did they come from, anyway?" They didn't know. It didn't matter. What do you talk about when you're falling love? It doesn't matter. All the questions are, Who are you? How do you think? Are you like me? Will you love me? And all the answers are, I am like this, like this, like this. I am like you. I like you. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson