Quotes from Peter F. Hamilton

So here she was in an alien arkship in a time-skewed enclave, where she'd arrived by traveling down a wormhole for fifty thousand light-years, ten thousand years after fleeing her home, battling a religious extremist alien with a grudge. Cool.

Joey almost smiled at how the spy chief's jaw muscles were working hard to keep his expression neutral.

Our conclusion is that you are simply studying us. We would now like to know why. As sentient entities we have that right.

You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly.

You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way.

Sometimes you have to do what's wrong in order to do what's right.

How you humans survive so much experience is something I shall never understand. To do so much and react to it all in the way you do is as much a curse as a blessing. You never take time to digest and appreciate what happens to you.

But to have dreamed the dream is to have flown above the mountains so high in all but deed.

How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel? We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate.

Perfection," Inigo said, "is what we strive for; it is never what we should achieve. There is no such thing as utopia. Life by its nature is a struggle. Take that away and you take away any reason to exist.

She couldn't organize an orgy in a brothel.

Are you sure it is trustworthy, Mellanie?" "I'd be dead if it wasn't." "Yes, I suppose that does generate a respectable level of personal confidence.

HR?' 'Human Resources.' 'In Brussels that kind of department is referred to as the Office for Personkind Enablement. Resources sounds like something you dig out of the ground.

Hindsight must surely be the most useless function of the human brain, torturing yourself over the unalterable past.

Alien Affairs. Bad name I always thought, makes it sound like they're shagging them rather than investigating them.

This is the age of total digitalisation; everything is online always.' 'Uh huh, and that's why our politicians are pure and clean, and the world works so well, is it? Because everybody knows everything and there's no hiding place.

Always demand proof of nirvana before you start following messiahs who're selling it to you. Those guys don't exactly have the greatest track record in the universe.

The military do so love shiny new technology, there's always so many ways to abuse it.

I believe that intelligence and rationality will always be primary no matter what shape sentient creatures take. To not think that would be to doubt the value of life itself.

Most people who have failed miserably in life itself have one last resort left available to them, they become a politician.

Ideology is a sick-soul-meme; it gnaws basic decency away until you can self-justify the most extreme acts as worthwhile to further the cause. Any cause.

Genuine scientific progress is a slow climb, which requires a stable society to support thinkers and theorists over many generations.

Societies only have waste products while acquiring fresh raw material remains a cheaper option than recycling.

Life's a bitch, then you rejuvenate and do it all over again.