“The value of a thing is what that thing will bring. -Legal Maxim”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“Hopeless causes are the only ones worth fighting for. The fight for the taxpayer is the most hopeless of them all.”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. - Robert A. Heinlein”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes.”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat's Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon's Day; The Red Right Hand; The Trojan Hearse; A Deadly Shade of Gold; Conjure Wife; Rosemary's Baby; Silverlock; King Conan. He'd packed books not to entertain, nor even to illustrate philosophies of life, but to rebuild civilization.”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“work, whatever it must be, is the service of God and of the community and therefore the expression of man's dignity. - Emil Brunner, Gifford Lectures, 1948”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“Johnny, did you ever hear of the Club of Rome?" Johnny had, but the audience would need reminding. "They were the people who did computer simulations to find out how long we could get along on our natural resources. Even with zero population growth—" "They tell us we're finished," Sharps broke in. "And that's stupid. We're only finished because they won't let us really use technology. They say we're running out of metals. There's more metal in one little asteroid than was mined all over the world in the last five years! And there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids. All we have to do is go get 'em." "Can we?" "You bet! Even with the technology we already have, we could do it. Johnny, out there in space it's raining soup, and we don't even know about soup bowls.”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“A civilization has the ethics it can afford. We”
― Larry Niven, quote from Lucifer's Hammer
“If we told every story from the middle, we would never appreciate happy endings.”
― Jessica Brody, quote from The Karma Club
“Nicholas is sometimes compared with his half-crazy great-great-grandfather Paul, who was strangled by a camarilla acting in agreement with his own son, Alexander “the Blessed.” These two Romanovs were actually alike in their distrust of everybody due to a distrust of themselves, their touchiness as of omnipotent nobodies, their feeling of abnegation, their consciousness, as you might say, of being crowned pariahs. But Paul was incomparably more colorful; there was an element of fancy in his rantings, however irresponsible. In his descendant everything was dim; there was not one sharp trait. Nicholas”
― Leon Trotsky, quote from History of the Russian Revolution
“They were two people staring at each other knowingly, communicating psychically amidst an ocean of deaf, dumb and blind meatsacks.”
― Travis Luedke, quote from The Nightlife: Las Vegas
“If one is approached with a deal predicated on cycles having ceased to occur, remember that invariably that’s a losing bet.”
― Howard Marks, quote from The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
“Tu, Rússia, és como o cavalo! Dois cascos dianteiros projetados para a escuridão, pasa o zazio; e os dois cascos traseiros cravados firmemente no solo de granito.
Queres tu também te separar da pedra que te segura, da mesma maneira que alguns dos teus filhos loucos que se apartaram do torrão pátrio - queres tu também te separar da pedra que te sustenta e ficar suspensa no ar, sem rédeas, para precipitar-te depois no caos das águas? Ou talvez queira lançar-te, rompendo as neblinas, através do espaço, para desaparecer, juntamente com os teus filhos, nas nuvens? Ou, empinada, puseste-te a meditar por muitos anos, oh, Rússia, diante do terrível destino que aqui te lançou - no meio deste norte soturno, onde até o ocaso leva muitas horas, onde o próprio tempo se lança, ora na noite gelada, ora - no resplendor do dia? Ou, temerosa do salto, baixarás novamente os cascos para levar, bufando, o enorme Cavaleiro das terras ilusórias para o fundo dos espaços planos?
Que assim não seja!...
Tendo uma vez se empinado e medido o espaço com o olhar, não baixará mais os cascos: o salto sobre a história: haverá; haverá uma grande agitação, rachar-se-á a terra; abalados pelo grande temor, irão ruir os próprios montes e as planícies queridas virarão um mar de corcovas. Nijni Nóvgorod, Vladímir e Uglitch ficarão sobre as corcovas.
Mas Petersburgo afundará.
Nesses dias todos os povos da terra irão arremeter-se de seus lugares; haverá uma grande batalha, - uma batalha inédita no mundo: hostes amarelas de asiáticos deixarão os locais tradicionais de sua habitação para manchar os campos da Europa com oceanos de sangue; haverá, haverá - Sushima! Haverá - uma nova Kalka!...
Campo de Kulikovo, à tua espera estou!
E neste dia o último sol resplandecerá sobre a minha terra pátria. Se, oh, Sol, se tu não nasceres, então, oh, Sol, as costas européias irão afundar sob o pesado calcanhar mongólico, e sobre essas costas irá encrespar-se a espuma; criaturas nascidas na Terra descerão novamente para o fundo dos oceanos - para o caos, progênito a muito tempo esquecido...
Nasce, oh, Sol!”
― Andrei Bely, quote from Petersburg
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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