Quotes from Poul Anderson

What else is life but always bidding farewell?

If nothing else, we today need a reminder that we must never take civilization for granted. I

They talked business for half an hour. (Centuries passed beyond the hull.)

So softly you hear it now, Mary O'Meara, but soon it comes joyful and clear. And soon in the shadow and dew of your hilltop a star-guided footfall rings near. My only beloved, I'm here.

I am told that our chroniclers' practice of inventing speeches for great persons whose lives they write is unscholarly.

we can't go on ... having regular bowel movements ... while creation happens!

Our own age is not one which can afford to call its ancestors savage.

for a moment infinitesimal and infinite, men, women, child, ship, and death were one. It

sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

I'm only certain that nothing is forever. No matter how carefully you design a system, it will go bad and die.

Give me leave, lord, and I will be the best of your hounds – but if a dog be driven out, he will become a wolf and feed on his master's flocks.

I think you look on death as your friend,' she murmured. 'It is a strange friend for a young man to have.' 'The only faithful friend in all the world,' he said bitterly. 'Death is the only one sure to be at your side.

Poor old G.K.C.! It's too bad he didn't live to see the change. What paradoxes he would have dreamed up!

Cuando la vida se pierde, solo queda, para vosotros y vuestros hijos, lo que de vosotros se dice.

You're right,' I'd say. 'The planet is grossly overpopulated and we'd better do something about it. Do you want to machine-gun the surplus yourself, or shall we start with you?

I must have first read The High Crusade in my early teens, and in memory, the book is fun, with the English villagers and nobles conquering the galaxy after they've taken over an alien space ship that landed in their village. The Baron, Sir Roger, merely intended to catch a quick ride to the wars in France, then go on to the Crusades in Jerusalem, but one thing led to another.

Machines can only find what ignorant men have programmed them to find.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

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.

My knowledge of the human psyche is as yet imperfect. Certain areas won't yield to computation.

He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.

At each stage...entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated.