Quotes About Speculation

What-ifs are for fools

The thing about science fiction is that it's totally wide open. But it's wide open in a conditional way.

Fantasy is totally wide open all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.

Science fiction," Butler writes, "has long treated people who might or might not exist—extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, however, many of the same science-fiction writers who started us thinking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life did nothing to make us think about here-at-home human variation.

People speculate about intelligent life, and it's fun to think about, but no one is claiming to have found anyone to talk to out there. I don't care. Life alone is enough. I find it . . . more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain. There is life out there.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.

I'm never satisfied. I need stronger and stronger stimulation. But I'm a coward and a lazybones, so for the most part nothing happens beyond my imagining some excitement. I'm a speculator of the metaphysical. An adventurer only in my mind. A navigator within the reading room. In other words, I'm an insignificant dream-weaver.

Rumor exaggerates.

He didn't say anything more, just waited for me to tell him what I'd been thinking. It was pure speculation, and I was opening myself up to ridicule by saying anything at all. I sat on the stool and realized that I had my loyalties, too.

Reincarnation?" He shrugged. "I've never seen any evidence that it's real. But I've never seen anything that disproves it either. I believe the afterlife is better than what we have here—and it would take something extraordinary to make someone willing to come back.

This is the essence of the thought experiment. Suppose this happens. What happens next? What would that necessitate? And then? And then? And then what implications would arise? And so on.

How enjoyable, how very enjoyable and luxurious it is, suddenly to emerge from the stern labyrinth of fact onto these dawn-lit uplands of surmise!

As we shook hands I wondered idly what her urine looked like.

I'd heard you were dead." "I heard you wear a red lace corset," I said matter-of-factly. "But I don't believe every bit of nonsense that gets rumored about.

Eso no suena nada sospechoso —dijo—. ¡Y luego te preguntas por qué la gente habla de ti! —No me pregunto por qué hablan —dije—. Me pregunto qué dicen.

Me preguntaba qué podrías estar haciendo aquí

To expect alien technology to be just a few decades ahead of ours is too incredible to be taken seriously.

He had no idea whether his facts were right, but he suspected that the Doctor was often in the same position.

Conjecture piled on speculation and topped by guesswork." "That's called lawyering, Vic. Which, I might remind you, requires an open mind. Creative thinking. Fresh ideas. Not being rigid.

In its early years, Islam encouraged philosophical and scientific speculation: to know how the world worked was to know the mind of God.

Today is the twenty-first of May 28367." So, over twenty-six thousand years ago . . . "How old am I, in Earth years?" "Twenty-six thousand, three hundred and fifty-five.

This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.

Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you with speculation about what he has seen. Such a person is puffed up without basis by his unspiritual mind.

or devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculation rather than the stewardship of Godís work, which is by faith.