Best 82 quotes of David Brin on MyQuotes

David Brin

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    David Brin

    Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy... in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of Nature

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    David Brin

    Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.

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    David Brin

    All this talk of using tax policy to 'assess social costs'...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.

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    David Brin

    A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.

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    David Brin

    Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

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    David Brin

    Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.

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    David Brin

    Beware of self-indulgence. The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; that ego is paramount over skill; that one can rise to a level from which one can tell the reader to go to hell. These myths, if believed, can ruin you. If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

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    David Brin

    But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

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    David Brin

    But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.

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    David Brin

    Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

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    David Brin

    Change is the very fabric of our time.

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    David Brin

    Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.

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    David Brin

    Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this... say so!

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    David Brin

    Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.

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    David Brin

    For all its beauty, honesty, and effectiveness at improving the human condition, science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not. It's about consensus and teamwork and respectful critical argument, working with, and through, natural law. It requires that we utter, frequently, those hateful words - 'I might be wrong.'

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    David Brin

    Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.

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    David Brin

    History and geology show what an eyeblink it's been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.

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    David Brin

    Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.

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    David Brin

    If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.

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    David Brin

    If there are still honest-smart men and women within those old and noble traditions, they should think carefully, observe and diagnose the illness. They should face the contradiction. Discuss the conflation. And then do as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and many others have done. Choose the miracle of creative competition over an idolatry of cash. They should stand up.

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    David Brin

    If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

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    David Brin

    If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

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    David Brin

    I hate the whole übermensch, superman temptation that pervades science fiction. I believe no protagonist should be so competent, so awe-inspiring, that a committee of 20 really hard-working, intelligent people couldn't do the same thing.

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    David Brin

    I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring

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    David Brin

    In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

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    David Brin

    In contrast, markets - oft mythologized as "natural" are the most unnatural things going. Libertarians will tell you "market laws are laws of nature", what baloney. Markets - and the other great modernist cornucopian tools - are magnificent wealth generating machines, built ad-hoc, through trial and error, constantly fine-tuned and refined, tinkered, adjusted.

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    David Brin

    Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?

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    David Brin

    In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers.

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    David Brin

    In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.

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    David Brin

    In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it's not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.

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    David Brin

    I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.

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    David Brin

    It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.

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    David Brin

    It is 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.

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    David Brin

    It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.

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    David Brin

    I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.

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    David Brin

    Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

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    David Brin

    Life is not fair... Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.

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    David Brin

    Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres obsess upon so-called eternal verities, SF deals with the possibility that our children may have different problems. They may, indeed, be different than we have been.

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    David Brin

    My education and background thoroughly inform my writing

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    David Brin

    My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

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    David Brin

    One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.

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    David Brin

    One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events

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    David Brin

    Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

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    David Brin

    Petals floating by, Drift through my woman's hand, As she remembers me.

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    David Brin

    Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases

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    David Brin

    Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.

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    David Brin

    Reciprocal accountability, or criticism [is] the only known antidote to error.

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    David Brin

    Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

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    David Brin

    Science has learned recently that contempt and indignation are addictive mental states. I mean physically and chemically addictive. Literally! People who are self-righteous a lot are apparently doping themselves rhythmically with auto-secreted surges of dopamine, endorphins and enkephalins. Didn't you ever ask yourself why indignation feels so good?

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    David Brin

    Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.