Quotes from David Brin

Others also credit Soros with this impressive (and terrifying) feat! The right-wing Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute repeat the accusation, along with many GOP politicians. But… but wasn't that supposed to be Ronald Reagan?

The Tandu were daring, but they did not add to their crimes the gaucherie of originality.

Martianus Capella strove to collect what he considered the highest accomplishments of his culture, the Seven Liberal Arts, and his collection—in weird poesical format—seemed a candle to many, during the Dark Ages. That story inspired Isaac Asimov, by the way, to write his famed Foundation sci-fi series.

On the other hand, there is so much hypocrisy among supposed free market champions! The 5,000 golf buddies in America's smug CEO caste – plus their New Lord backers and Wall Street pals – claim to oppose central planning. But their circle-jerk connivings only shift it away from openly accountable civil servants into dark crypts that are secret, self-flattering and inherently stupid.

right after the 2016 U.S. election was trashed by malevolent forces, Facebook invited me to their headquarters to consult about ways to use transparency to prevent their site from being hijacked again by meme-manipulators. I can tell you now that absolutely none of my suggestions were adopted, or even closely examined. I am not encouraged.

All Scots are engineers, and all engineers are Scots.

Those "socialists" must do badly at encouraging growth in an entrepreneurial-competitive capitalist economy. – They're fiscally irresponsible and will saddle future generations with outrageous debt. – Because liberals moralize, that means they cannot be the pragmatic ones. Would it surprise you that these truisms all run diametrically opposite to fact? Or that almost none of our side's pols or pundits have glommed onto that response?

The health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie.

À l'intérieur, il se sentait un creux immense et douloureux, comme s'il avait eu le cÅ"ur pris dans un étau de glace. Rien ne semblait pouvoir bouger en lui, au risque de briser quelque chose de chancelant, de précaire.

That's not how human psychology works. No, we tend to do lots of things without knowing why. We need excuses, though, so we rationalize! If an obvious reason for our behavior isn't readily available, we invent one, preferably one that helps us think better of ourselves.

Though his book vigorously promotes strong privacy, Miller notes that people routinely trade personal information for convenience or a few dollars of savings, even offering names of "friends and families" to commercial users, if it benefits them.

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. – Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chapter II, Part II

humans wrestled endlessly with their own overpowering egos. Some tried suppressing selfness, seeking detachment. Others subsumed personal ambition in favor of a greater whole—family, religion, or a leader. Later they passed through a phase in which individualism was extolled as the highest virtue, teaching their young to inflate the ego beyond all natural limits or restraint.

Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea." "Why, as men do aland—the great ones eat up the little ones." —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE King Richard the Second

Adam Smith saw what had happened to markets and societies for millennia. Winners are never satisfied with success in the latest market battle, with a cool product or financial or political achievement. As humans, we use any recent advantage to ensure that competitors will fail in future struggles.

The radicals are right about that. Diversity is the key. "But it need not be the same diversity as existed before mankind. Indeed, it cannot be the same. We are in a time of changes. Species will pass away and others take their place, as has happened before. An ecosystem frozen in stone can only become a fossil.

Living thing, does Entropy, my wicked Aunt, notice our joint conspiracy? Not yet, I think, for you are yet too small. Your puny struggle against her tide is mere fluttering in a great wind. And she thinks I am still her ally.

Tormentas de estrellas Sobre el fragor de las olas... ¿Nos mojaremos, amor?

In principle, an open society sees information flow as a good thing, to be hampered only in the presence of strong evidence that harm cannot be prevented by any other means.

and deeply seductive, storytelling tropes that you see in cinema.

But then, of course, it could have been worse. This may not be the best of all possible worlds. But Pangloss never met Murphy. And things could have been very much worse, indeed. The pyramid loomed ahead, separated by a broad river from the main part of an alien metropolis that had once been named Cal'mari.

If we humans annihilate ourselves, mammalian genes are rich enough to replace us with another, maybe wiser race within a few million years. Perhaps descendants of coyotes or raccoons, creatures too adaptable ever to need refuge in arks. Too tough to be wiped out by any calamity the likes of us create.

Corporations demand compliance assistance when government imposes new regulations. So, why can't poor folks get help to comply with voter ID laws?

It's 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 they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable