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87c6193
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It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.
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sleep
sadness
insomnia
restlessness
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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756ce12
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That's libertarians for you -- anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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329cbc2
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You can't get any movement larger than five people without including at least one fucking idiot.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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adcb84b
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Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.
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science
psychology
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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13f536a
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We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there will be garden everywhere, and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans, or zamindars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more quadis or mullahs or ulema, no more slavery a..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a60bde9
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Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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907688b
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We all have secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes, our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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b0abb9b
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And in this curious state I had the realization, at the moment of seeing that stranger there, that I was a person like everybody else. That I was known by my actions and words, that my internal universe was unavailable for inspection by others. They didn't know. They didn't know, because I never told them.
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identity
friendship
isolation
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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ff5d3f5
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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.
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work
kim-stanley-robison
robots
science-fiction
humans
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4f48081
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Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.
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scientists
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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deffabb
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What we need is equality without conformity.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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9db9d52
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The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time--
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feudalism
government
power
democracy
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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ff29676
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And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe--its culmination, like the color of the flower at first bloom on a wet morning.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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09f1d20
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Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.
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formative-years
development
maturity
memory
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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c71d7fd
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We were outside the world, we didn't even own things -- some clothes. . . . This arrangement resembles the prehistoric way to live, and it therefore feels right to us, because our brains recognize it from 3 millions of years practicing it. In essence our brains grew to their current configuration in response to the realities of that life. So as a result people grow powerfully attached to that kind of life, when they get the chance to live i..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4a982d0
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History was like some vast thing that was always over the tight horizon, invisible except in its effects. It was what happened when you weren't looking -- an unknowable infinity of events, which although out of control, controlled everything.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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d54cdd9
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I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia.
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libraries
library
music
groves
little-league
orange
beach
california
utopia
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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86a6d84
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They were so ignorant! Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, just like always. It was appalling how stupid they were, really, and he could not help lashing into them.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4b86f10
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Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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570b6ad
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An excess of reason is itself a form of madness
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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6062c66
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Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can't grasp the current situation.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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9d5aff8
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In the pseudoiterative, one performs the ritual of the day attentive to both the joy of the familiar and the shiver of the accidental.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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bca3ee2
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We dream, we wake on a cold hillside, we pursue the dream again. In the beginning was the dream, and the work of disenchantment never ends.
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learning
dreams
knowledge
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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50c383c
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All the repetitions in the pattern were superficial; the moment was always new. It had to be lived, and then the next moment embraced as it arrived.
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change
inspirational
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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9f7091b
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But lies were what people wanted; that was politics.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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defb35b
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Here they were, on the only planetary surface on which you could walk freely, naked to the wind and the sun, and when they had a choice, they sat in boxes and stared at littler boxes, just as if they had no choice-as if they were in a space station-
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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0aad5ce
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The intense desire to talk with someone, sharp as any pain; this was what people meant when they talked about love. Or rather; this was what Sax would acknowledge to be love. Just the super-heightened desire to share thoughts. That alone.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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d462f3b
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So, you know, Fermi's paradox has its answer, which is this: by the time life gets smart enough to leave its planet, it's too smart to want to go. Because it knows it won't work. So it stays home. It enjoys its home. As why wouldn't you? It doesn't even bother to try to contact anyone else. Why would you? You'll never hear back. So that's my answer to the paradox. You can call it Euan's Answer.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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32c7be7
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It is easy to live multiple lives! What is hard is to be a whole person
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4201d00
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The word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear water. (Bistami) Pg. 128
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truth
missunderstanding
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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37ebb0c
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That's a large part of what economics is - people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven't just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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7b3a082
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In games there are rules, but in life the rules keep changing.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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2d35032
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That is what capitalism is--a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives' labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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6e2aaed
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To a very great extent human history has been the story of the unequal accumulation of harvested wealth, shifting from one centre of power to another, while always expanding the four great inequalities. This is history. Nowhere, as far as I know, has there ever been a civilization or moment when the wealth of the harvests, created by all, has been equitably distributed. Power has been exerted wherever it can be, and each successful coercion..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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0cfa18b
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One acts, and thus finds out what one has decided to do.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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708d972
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The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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9383ba1
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It's the love of right lures men to wrong.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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118a66f
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You can only kill disappointment with a new try.
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perseverance
inspirational
|
Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4805574
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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."
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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d4bbeb7
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health, social life, job, house, partners, finances; leisure use, leisure amount; working time, education, income, children; food, water, shelter, clothing, sex, health care; mobility; physical safety, social safety, job security, savings account, insurance, disability protection, family leave, vacation; place tenure, a commons; access to wilderness, mountains, ocean; peace, political stability, political input, political satisfaction; air,..
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necessities
the-good-life
simplicity
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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c372237
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Money equals power; power makes the law; and law makes government.
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money
law
power
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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d3c8cde
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You just don't have faith!" Frank repeated. "Well I hope I never get it! It's like being hit by a hammer in the head!"
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religion
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a7f8cd8
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The intense thereness of it-haecceity Sax had called it once, when John had asked him something about his religious beliefs-I believe in haecceity, Sax had said, in thisness, in here-and-nowness, in the particular individuality of every moment. That's why I want to know what is this? what is this? what is this? Now, remembering Sax's odd word and his odd religion, John finally understood him; because he was feeling the thisness of the momen..
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life
feeling
moment
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4d93c65
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teaching was the most rigorous form of learning.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |