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74cfec6
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You've located intrinsic worth in the wrong place," she said to all of them, over the common band. "It's like a rainbow. Without an observer at a twenty-three-degree angle to the light reflecting off a cloud of spherical droplets, there is no rainbow. The whole universe is like that. Our spirits stand at a twenty-three-degree angle to the universe." --
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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0b88718
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Efficiency, n. The speed and frictionlessness with which money moves from the poor to the rich.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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70ff303
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Labor, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. --Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a1454f9
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Every ideal and value seemed to melt under a drenching of money, the universal solvent. Money money money. The fake fungibility of money, the pretense that you could buy meaning, buy life.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a071b2c
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Fungibility, n. The tendency of everything to be completely interchangeable with money. Health, for instance.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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74ac11e
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Survival of the fittest," which Sax had always considered a useless tautology. But if social Darwinists were taking over, then maybe the concept gained importance, as a religious dogma of the ruling order...."
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social-darwinism
survival-of-the-fittest
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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7ae8a8f
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We live in a world where people pretend money can buy you anything, so money becomes the point, so we all work for money.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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0a1c412
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she keeps a shrine to Sol Invictus in her room, performs the pratahsamdhya ceremony, the salute to the sun, every morning
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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b64c746
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One thought ever at the fore-- That in the Divine Ship, the World, breasting Time and Space, All Peoples of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, are bound to the same destination. I see Freedom, completely arm'd and victorious and very haughty, with Law on one side and Peace on the other, A stupendous trio all issuing forth against the idea of caste; What historic denouements are these we so rapidly approach?
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history
people
global
law
peace
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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941223d
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Domesticating the ant was no easy matter. The little red scientists had not even believed such creatures were possible, because of surface area-to-volume constraints, but there they were, clumping around like intelligent robots, so the little red scientists had to explain them. To get some help they climbed up into the humans' reference books, and read up on ants. They learned about the ants' pheromones, and they synthesized the ones they n..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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ef88a8a
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When in doubt, just do it. Try something and observe the results. Good-enough decision algorithm
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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27dfdea
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How you think about what you're doing makes a huge difference
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4c271d8
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Praxis locals spoke French to him, and he could barely understand them. He had to listen hard, hoping his native tongue would come back to him, that the franglaisation and frarabisation he had heard about had not changed things too much; it was shocking to fumble in his native tongue, shocking too that the French Academy had not done its job and kept the language frozen in the seventeenth century like it was supposed to.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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767dd27
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Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. Money, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. --Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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57a82dc
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Beauty was the promise of happiness, not happiness itself; and the anticipated world was often more rich than any real thing. But this time who could say? This time might be the golden one at last
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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cec9f96
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The rounded slopes, Phyllis said, indicated ancient water as clearly as the grain in petrified wood indicated the original tree. By the way she spoke Nadia understood that this was another of her disagreements with Ann; Phyllis believed in the long wet past model, Ann in the short wet past. Or something like that. Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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3866fb1
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They published their papers, and shouted and waved their arms, and a few canny and deeply thoughtful sci-fi writers wrote up lurid accounts of such an eventuality, and the rest of civilization went on torching the planet like a Burning Man pyromasterpiece
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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f74874d
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Buddhism spreads by people converting out of their own wish for peace and right action. But power condenses around those willing to use force.
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war
religion
peace
power
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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c5009d6
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Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. ... And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. W..
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nature
life
viriditas
cosmos
patterns
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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2cd7baa
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She recalled hearing how after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, they had built prison camps faster than medical facilities. They had expected riots and so had put people of color in jail preemptively. But that was back in the twentieth century, in the dark ages, the age of fascisms both home and abroad. Since
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4688725
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Art is not truth. Art is a lie that enables us to realize the truth. said Picasso
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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417b38b
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To hope without hope, which would be wise, is impossible. --MARCEL PROUST, Les Plaisirs et les Jours
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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13dfdd9
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Therefore, simple syllogism: human language is futile and stupid. Meaning furthermore that human narratives are futile and stupid.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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41373e4
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Frank recalled a fire from his youth: two climber gals slightly buzzed had come bombing into Camp Four around midnight and hauled him away from a dying fire, insisting that he join them in a midnight swim in the Merced River, and who could say no to that. Though it was shocking cold water and pitch black to boot, more a good idea than a comfortable reality, swimming with two naked California women in the Yosemite night. But then when they g..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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0880dbf
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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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79574bc
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minors.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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ef0b290
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Reality is mathematical, as long as you understand that uncertainty and contingency can be mathematically described, without them becoming any more certain.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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5311648
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He stood and walked to her. Beside her a bucket stood on the sand, filled with the little silver fish from the previous night. She gestured at the bucket, offering him some of the fish, and he saw that her hand was a thick mass of shiny dark brown, her fingers long tubes of lighter hollow brown, with bulbs at their ends. Like tubes of seaweed. And her coat was a brown frond of kelp, and her face a wrinkled brown bulb, popped by the slit of ..
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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53985d5
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Ridiculous. But lies were what people wanted; that was politics.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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03dc791
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The urge to excel and the urge to lead aren't the same. Sometimes I think they may be opposites.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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43a9654
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Very little detective work, he was noticing, could be accomplished before a crime occurred.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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6e23262
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There was no pleasure like double-crossing a crook.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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0c6c6d1
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Friendship was just diplomacy by other means, after all.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a8703e9
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Some of them defined ideology as an imaginary relationship to a real situation.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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802d7eb
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Master and slave wear the yoke together. Anarchy is the only true freedom.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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49e373f
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In the random flux of universal contingency, nothing mattered; and yet, and yet...
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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3c6e0d8
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But nothing lasts, not even stone, not even despair.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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19e97ef
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Rituals should have some unpleasantness, or you don't appreciate them properly.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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4d3bb4b
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Every generation is its own secret society.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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Not everyone was as good at creation as they were at complaining.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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b3b0d96
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But one had to trust instruments over instincts, that was science.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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e47a793
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Power is like matter, it has gravity, it clumps and then starts to draw more into itself.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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946f850
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Tourism is an ugly business, it's not fit work for human beings. It's hosting parasites.
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Kim Stanley Robinson |
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a2e7c08
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Could politics ever be anything but politics, practical, cynical, compromised, ugly?
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Kim Stanley Robinson |