Poul Anderson Quotes

26 quotes in 443 categories

• He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.
• Will none wipe the sneer of the face of the cosmos?
• I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter…
• The fish that first ventured ashore had considerable practical problems.
• A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.
• Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery
• So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the…
• Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell.
• Happier are all men than the dwellers in Faerie – or the gods, for that matter…Better a life like a falling star, bright across the…
• I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on... It's…
• Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.
• What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de…
• Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.
• In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic…
• In my considered opinion, the profit to be made by permanent settlement in space is nothing less than the survival of industrial civilization, and therefore…
• Why do most people think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe?
• At each stage...entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one.
• My knowledge of the human psyche is as yet imperfect. Certain areas won't yield to computation.
• If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.
• A fanatic's willingness to kill or be killed in the service of a cause cannot prove the rightness of that cause.

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