Short, powerful, blowtorch bursts of energy, inspiration, and unforeseen possibilities. The ground-shaking quotes, the ones that stick can be lightbulb moments where a new understanding hits you in a nanosecond, or, other times; they are seeds planted, tended to over time, fully sprouting down the road. I've shared many favorites here on the message board and am thrilled that a new book has arrived: "Damn You, Entropy": 1001 of the greatest science fiction quotes. These authors clearly recognized that there was more on the line than a spot on the New York Times Best Seller List! These densely packed missives push back on humanity's irrationality, self-deception, and pathetic need to submit to a king, a dictator, a messiah! They are as relevant today as when they were first penned. I omitted the authors but they include many whom you would expect (Huxley, Asimov, Dick, etc.). So... buy the book and settle in with some great minds.
"Scientists are often seen as turbo nerds, but the philosophical foundations of science are actually those of punk rock anarchy: never respect authority, never take anyone's word on anything, and test all the things you think you know to confirm or deny them for yourself." Ryan North
"That little voice, convinced of its lordship over the empire of your brain, is less than sea foam, carried over the deep waters of your mind." Scott Base
"Our species doesn't operate by reality. It operates by stories." Becky Chambers
"Most ignorance is by choice, you know, and so ignorance is very telling about what really matters to people". Kim Stanley Robinson
"He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the window pane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside." Philip K. Dick
" I fear my ignorance. " Isaac Asimov
"It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. " Ursula K. Le Guin
"The vast unknown of nature, so vast that everything which was real to me, understandable to me, was a mere drop in the ocean of the existing unknown." Ray Cummings
"Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy." Walter M. Miller Jr.
" We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way." Aldous Huxley
"Hope clouds observation." Frank Herbert
"In this Age of Enlightenment, the soothsayer and the astrologer flourish. As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth." Philip Jose Farmer
"The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice." Brian J. Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
"It's a strange thing. We humans pride ourselves on being ruled by reason, yet with human civilization at stake, we chose ideology and ignorance. " James Lawrence Powell
"For all its beauty, honesty and effectiveness at improving the human condition, science demands a terrible price-that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not." David Brin
"The admission of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom." James Edwin Gunn
"Believe isn't the right word. Things either are or they aren't in science." Gregory Benford
"Humans are driven by emotion. Much of our so-called logic is merely the rationalization of choices that make us feel good. " David Walton
"All the courage in the world cannot alter fact." Hampton Fancher and Michael Green
"You're not even consciously aware of the world until your brain has filtered and censored and hammered it down into a mush of self-serving Darwinian dogma. The cataracts on your eyes are four billion years thick, it's amazing you can see anything at all." Peter Watts
And as they say on Looney Tunes, "That's all folks."
Peter T.
