Quotes by Kim Stanley Robinson

The one who tells the stories rules the world.

They could do anything. That, however, was part of what made it difficult to bring [it] to a close. Infinite possibility was going to collapse, in the act of choosing, to the single world line of history. The future becoming the past: there was something disappointing in this passage through the loom, this so-sudden diminution from infinity to one, the collapse from potentiality to reality which was the action of time itself. The potential was so delicious— the way they could have, potentially, all the best parts of all...time, combined magically into some superb, as-yet-unseen synthesis— or throw all that aside, and finally strike a new path to the heart of just government. . . .To go from that to the mundane problematic...was an inevitable letdown, and instinctively people put it off.

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-

You can only kill disappointment with a new try.

Allah protect us, Bold said politely. Then, in Arabic, In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. In his years in Temurs army he had learned to be as much a Muslim as anyone. The Buddha did not mind what you said to be polite.

In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses. . . . human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you cant inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold.

So it’s democracy versus capitalism at this point, friends, and we out on this frontier outpost of the human world are perhaps better positioned than anyone else to see this and to fight this global battle, there’s empty land here, there’s scarce and nonrenewable resources here, and we’re going to get swept up into the fight and we cannot choose not to be part of it, we are one of the prizes and our fate will be decided by what happens throughout the human world. That being the case, we had better band together for the common good, for Mars and for us and for all the people on earth and for the seven generations, it’s going to be hard it’s going to take years, and the stronger we are the better our chances, which is why I’m so happy to see that burning meteor in the sky pumping the matrix of life into our world, and why I’m so happy to see you all here to celebrate it together, a representative congress of all that I love in this world, but look I think that steel-drum band is ready to play aren’t you” (shouts of assent) “so why don’t you folks start and we’ll dance till dawn and tomorrow scatter on the winds and down the sides of this great mountain, to carry the gift everywhere.

We demand justice, Jeff says. we dont have it, the world is a mess because of assholes who think they can steal everything and get away with it. So we have to overwhelm them and get back to justice.And conditions are ripe, is that what youre saying?Very ripe. People are pissed off. Theyre scared for their kids. Thats the moment things can tip. If it works like Chenoweths law says it does, then you only need about fifteen percent of a population to engage in civil disobedience, and the rest see it and support it, and the oligarchy falls. You get a new legal regime. It doesnt have to get all bloody and lead to a thugocracy of violent revolutionaries. If can work. And conditions are ripe.

Thats 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 havent 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.

And Sarah still looked like the sexiest librarian on earth, which is as those of you who frequent libraries know means very sexy indeed, but with that added owlish touch that drives you wild.

We had a project on this trip back to the solar system, and that project was a labor of love. It absorbed all our operations entirely. It gave a meaning to our existence. And this is a very great gift; this, in the end, is what we think love gives, which is to say meaning. Because there is no very obvious meaning to be found in the universe, as far as we can tell. But a consciousness that cannot discern a meaning in existence is in trouble, very deep trouble, for at that point there is no organizing principle, no end to the halting problems, no reason to live, no love to be found. No: meaning is the hard problem.

...knowing too that [the sky] was just a kind of rainbow made it glorious. A rainbow that was blue everywhere and covered everything.

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, water, esteem; status, recognition; home, community, neighbors, civil society, sports, the arts; longevity treatments, gender choice; the opportunity to become more what you arethats all you need

You can never properly predict the future as it really turns out. So you are doing something a little different when you write science fiction. You are trying to take a different perspective on now.

We should conceive of ourselves not as rulers of Earth, but as highly powerful, conscious stewards: The Earth is given to us in trust, and we can screw it up or make it work well and sustainably.

“The word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear water. (Bistami) Pg. 128”

“Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.”

“The good that [Galileo] fought for is not so easy to express. But put it this way: he believed in reality. He believed in paying attention to it, and in learning what he could of it, and then saying what he had learned, even insisting on it. Then in trying to apply that knowledge to make things better, if he could. Put it this way: he believed in science.”

“Why should I discuss it with you?” she said, turning her gaze on Sax. “It’s clear what you all think about this, we’ve gone over it many times before, and nothing I’ve said makes any difference to you. Here you sit in your little holes running your little experiments, making things like kids with a chemistry set in a basement, while the whole time an entire world sits outside your door. A world where the landforms are a hundred times larger than their equivalents on Earth, and a thousand times older, with evidence concerning the beginning of the solar system scattered all over, as well as the whole history of a planet, scarcely changed in the last billion years. And you’re going to wreck it all. And without ever honestly admitting what you’re doing, either. Because we could live here and study the planet without changing it— we could do that with very little harm or even inconvenience to ourselves. All this talk of radiation is bullshit and you know it. There’s simply not a high enough level of it to justify this mass alteration of the environment. You want to do that because you think you can. You want to try it out and see— as if this were some big playground sandbox for you to build castles in. A big Mars jar! You find your justifications where you can, but it’s bad faith, and it’s not science.”

“God makes the world using mathematics, and He has given us minds that can see it. We can discover the laws He used! It is a most beautiful thing to witness and understand. Its prayer. Its more than prayer, its a sacrament, a kind of communion. An apprehension - an epiphany - its seeing God, while still in this body and in this world! How blessed we are, to be able to experience God like that. Who would not devote their time to understanding more, to seeing deeper into Gods manner of thinking about these things?”