David Brin Quotations

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring

There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?

Self-righteous people can talk themselves into forgetting they are part of a civilization. They can then feed on that culture, bringing it down. It's happened many times in the past. It could happen to us.

In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases

But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.

I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing

She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy... in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of Nature

When I begin a book, I inevitably discover many things along the way, about the characters, their past histories and the political intrigues that surround them. This discovery process is vital, and I would not prejudice it by deciding too much in advance

The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers - it's that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.

What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?

I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.

You don't have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!

Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some 'norm'), the freedom to learn from experience ... to be influenced by reasonable arguments ... and the appeal to the emotions ... and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.

I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.

The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.

In contrast, markets - oft mythologized as "natural" are the most unnatural things going. Libertarians will tell you "market laws are laws of nature", what baloney. Markets - and the other great modernist cornucopian tools - are magnificent wealth generating machines, built ad-hoc, through trial and error, constantly fine-tuned and refined, tinkered, adjusted.

Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.

Petals floating by, Drift through my woman's hand, As she remembers me.

It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.

Science has learned recently that contempt and indignation are addictive mental states. I mean physically and chemically addictive. Literally! People who are self-righteous a lot are apparently doping themselves rhythmically with auto-secreted surges of dopamine, endorphins and enkephalins. Didn't you ever ask yourself why indignation feels so good?

Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the Universe to make sense!

Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres obsess upon so-called eternal verities, SF deals with the possibility that our children may have different problems. They may, indeed, be different than we have been.

Reciprocal accountability, or criticism [is] the only known antidote to error.

Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.

If there are still honest-smart men and women within those old and noble traditions, they should think carefully, observe and diagnose the illness. They should face the contradiction. Discuss the conflation. And then do as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and many others have done. Choose the miracle of creative competition over an idolatry of cash. They should stand up..

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.

Change is the very fabric of our time.

Beware of self-indulgence. The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; that ego is paramount over skill; that one can rise to a level from which one can tell the reader to go to hell. These myths, if believed, can ruin you. If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.

Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.

Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.

The best time to act on this was decades ago. The second best time is now.

One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.

History and geology show what an eyeblink it's been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.

Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.

All this talk of using tax policy to 'assess social costs'...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.

Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world.

Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.

Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.

Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.

Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.

Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this... say so!

I find humans tremendously interesting

The three basic material rights -- continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness.

It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.

If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.

If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it's not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.

The village is coming back, like it or not.

Life is not fair...Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?

In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers.

In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

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. It's about consensus and teamwork and respectful critical argument, working with, and through, natural law. It requires that we utter, frequently, those hateful words - 'I might be wrong.'

Is this a horrible future? Or actually a return to what we've always had in the past? Think of old villages. Everybody knew everything about everybody else. Strangers were intimidating and worrisome. This will be like the village our ancestors grew up in, only with 7 billion people.