Quotes from Poul Anderson

Sí, hijo mío —rió con fatiga—. He conocido el cambio. He sentido que el tiempo corría como un río caudaloso, arrastrando en su torrente esperanzas naufragadas.

Holger didn't feel like an orgy, but had no way to refuse.

Our guess is that machines capable enough to be useful interstellar explorers are necessarily so complex as to be vulnerable to mutation in their programs," Dayan said. "They need not visit a nova. Sooner or later, if nothing else, cosmic radiation will do it. Generally, they lose their 'wits' and just drift on aimlessly forever. Probably no line of von Neumanns gets beyond a few hundred light-years before it goes effectively extinct.

If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals

se veut On s'enlace On s'en lasse On s'en veut.

The fact that there are countless things we will never know, and many that we could not possibly know, does not mean they do not exist—only that we cannot prove it.

Hard to imagine, but . . . well, we have so many bureaucrats, so many people in high places like Lord Hauksberg who insists the enemy doesn't really mean harm

Recordó que siempre había deseado que Aníbal ganase. Había algo repelente en la avaricia fría y falta de imaginación de Roma. Y allí estaba, intentando salvar una ciudad. La vida resultaba una extraña ocupación.

I won't lie down and die gracefully. I'm far too cowardly for that.

I hope we do feel and reason enough alike that I can play tricks on you.

You'll either be killed, young man, or you'll do something that will force us to step on you, or you'll go far indeed.

My God—very literally, my God—we can't go on … having regular bowel movements … while creation happens!

he claimed to be one of the last true conservatives—only, to conserve, you had to prune and graft and adjust.

Robotics is never yet got to where live brains can be altogether replaced, except in bureaucrats.

Root'—radix—you radicals are all alike," Flandry said. "You think everything springs from one or two unique causes, and if only you can get at them, everything will automatically become paradisical. History doesn't go that way. Read some and see what the result of every resort to violence by reformists has been.

Survivor—under what conditions?" "Any conditions. Adaptability, toughness, quickness—those are the things that count most." "I think kindness means a lot," said Sheila timidly. "It's a luxury, I'm afraid, though of course it's such luxuries that make us human," said Mandelbaum. "Kindness to whom? Sometimes you just have to cut loose and get violent. Some wars are necessary.

No matter what one's side in any strife, some allies would make better enemies.

Well, I tell you, my friend, economics is not all there is to life.

We chatter thus, while miracles go on. Perhaps the saints can pass eternity enrapt in solemn bliss; but we are mortal.

You cannot go back into the past and change what has happened, no matter what you do. But your actions can be a part of what did happen.

If I have learned anything, it is that intelligence and knowledge are worth little by themselves. Failing the enlightenment that goes beyond words and the world, they serve mainly to provide us with wonderful reasons for doing what we intend to do regardless.

The same fight was being waged, here the Nazis and there the Middle World; but in both places, Chaos against Law, something old and wild and blind at war with man and the works of man.

Magic!' cried an old man. 'Tis sorcery, and we are undone!' 'Not so,' I told him, 'Sorcery cannot harm good Christians.' 'But I am a miserable sinner,' he wailed.

A haloed westering sun slanted rays through air brilliant, breathless, and boreal.