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THE EAGLE HAS LANDED by Robert J. Sawyer I've spent a lot of time watching Earth--more than forty of that planet's years. My arrival was in response to the signal from our automated probe, which had detected that the paper-skinned bipedal beings of that world had split the atom. The probe had served well, but there were some things only a living being could do properly, and assessing whether a lifeform should be contacted by the Planetary C..
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Robert Silverberg |
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Stale is stale and borrowed is borrowed, no matter how original your models may have been.
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Robert Silverberg |
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It is my craft and my science to Watch. It is yours to jeer. Each of us to our specialty.
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Robert Silverberg |
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I find the world and all it contains extremely fascinating. Is this sinful?
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Robert Silverberg |
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Anything big and strange always upsets the people in power.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Moas aren't very bright," Gracchus answers. "That's one good reason why they became extinct."
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Robert Silverberg |
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He didn't have to observe the niceties of etiquette when talking to a computer.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Unacceptable, maybe. But not unthinkable. Nothing's unthinkable once somebody's thought it.
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Robert Silverberg |
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She loaned him books. Worlds were revealed to him: worlds piled on worlds, worlds without end.
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Robert Silverberg |
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I hate no one, sir. It seems a waste of emotional energy.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Never pass by a chance to shut up.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Take this as a bit of easy wisdom: people who try to rule over other people are going to be hated.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Like all bureaucrats, he was bewildered by an unpredictable development.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Only a man who doubts his own bravery bristles when called a coward.
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Robert Silverberg |
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A man who lies to himself is the worst liar of all.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Why conjure up galactic spaceships when meteors were so common?
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Robert Silverberg |
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The fascination of what's difficult," said Chalk. "It spins the world on its bearings."
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Robert Silverberg |
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She shuttled between impish girlhood and neurotic womanhood.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Do I chatter?""Should I be honest or should I be tactful?"
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Robert Silverberg |
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The universe is a perilous place. We do our best. Everything else is unimportant.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Ignorance can't be pardoned. Only cured.
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Robert Silverberg |
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When you treat a rational autonomous creature as though he's a mere beast, what does that make you?
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Robert Silverberg |
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You may not hold me guilty of sins committed in dreams.
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Robert Silverberg |
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All true enlightenment is illegal at first, within its context.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Knowledge never injures the soul. It only purges that which encrusts and saps the soul.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Love of others begins with love of self.
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Robert Silverberg |
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What value is lineage to a drowning man?
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Robert Silverberg |
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My only regrets were for poor tactics, not for faulty principles.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Morality after the fact, said Eli from the rear, is worse than no morality at all.
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Robert Silverberg |
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The more you succeed in making out of yourself, the more bitter a thing it is to have to die.
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Robert Silverberg |
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We are born by accident into a purely random universe.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Gottfried, like any true dictator, liked to surround himself with bland obliging ciphers.
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Robert Silverberg |
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It's not a philosophy, Mr. Nichols. It's an accommodation to the nature of reality.
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Robert Silverberg |
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Thus does the unyielding, inescapable future ineluctably devour the present.
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Robert Silverberg |
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What matters," he said earnestly, "is the display of skill, not the manners of the audience."
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Robert Silverberg |
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I think power is a sickness and governing is a folly for madmen.
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Robert Silverberg |