Greg Bear Quotes

28 Sourced Quotes

Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.

Greg Bear
But to fight something, you really have to try to understand its motivations—particularly when the something you're fighting holds most of the cards, the deck is stacked against you, and the whole gambling hall is on fire and filled with thugs.

Greg Bear
All things will be ambiguous, for this is the curse of wisdom.

Greg Bear
Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten.
It was in the blood, the flesh,
And now it is forever.

Greg Bear
You deserve whoever governs you … Everyone is responsible for the actions of their leaders.

Greg Bear
When evenly matched, you cannot win against your enemy unless you understand them. And if you truly understand, why are you fighting and not talking?

Greg Bear
Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

Greg Bear
We must know our enemy, at least a little.
That's dangerous, Prufrax said, almost instinctively.
Yes, it is. What you know, you cannot hate.

Greg Bear
She saw that in all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction. When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier.

Greg Bear
There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds.

Greg Bear
The price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.

Greg Bear
A Stellar's jay hopped along behind him, watching closely for dropped crumbs. It's dark, he told the bird. Go to sleep. I've eaten already. Where were you? No food now. The bird persisted, however; it knew humans were liars.

Greg Bear
We've been fighting for so long, we've begun to lose ourselves. And it's getting worse.

Greg Bear
To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat.

Greg Bear
Having one's eyes opened doesn't make one grateful.

Greg Bear
All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile,

Greg Bear
I sometimes think we deserve to die, we're all so goddamned stupid.

Greg Bear
Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.

Greg Bear
There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive—and getting away with it—is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.

Greg Bear
We are born in ignorance, we die in ignorance, but maybe sometimes we learn something important and pass it along to others before we die. Or we write it down in a little book.

Greg Bear
Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don't understand everything.

Greg Bear
That's insane, Lanier said.
Not very. It's politics.

Greg Bear
Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization...

Greg Bear
The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self. We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?

Greg Bear
It's not impossible, Minelli said.
No, Edward admitted, but it's paranoid as hell, and that's the last thing we need, more fear.

Greg Bear
We'd like to agree with you. He glanced at Arthur.
We can't, however, Arthur said.
For the moment, then, amicable disagreement and open minds.

Greg Bear
Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

Greg Bear
Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches.

Greg Bear