Best 34 quotes of Greg Bear on MyQuotes

All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile.

All things will be ambiguous, for this is the curse of wisdom.

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.

But to fight something, you really have to try to understand its motivations—particularly when the something you’re fighting holds most of the cards, the deck is stacked against you, and the whole gambling hall is on fire and filled with thugs.

For years, even before 9/11, I've been trying to warn that the threat from amateur biolabs will ultimately turn out to be far more troublesome than leakage from military labs - perhaps even more costly and deadly than nuclear terrorism.

Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.

It's been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!

It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.

Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization.

Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten.It was in the blood, the flesh,And now it is forever.

Of all the planets apart from Earth in our solar system, Mars is the most hospitable. Yeah. Right. Better keep my visit short. And yet, despite the discomfort, the danger, I love it here. I love coming back for these imaginary vacations. The sights are amazing.

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

Science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.

Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don't understand everything.

The price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.

There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.

There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds.

To translate kinesics or paralinguistic messages into words is likely to introduce gross falsification due not merely to the human propensity for trying to falsify statements about "feelings" and relationship and to the distortions which arise whenever the products of one system of coding are dissected onto the premises of another, but especially to the fact that all such translation must give to the more or less unconscious and involuntary message the appearance of conscious intent.

Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches.

We may exist in all universes, but 'hear' only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs.

When all hopes are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.

You deserve whoever governs you ... Everyone is responsible for the actions of their leaders.

Antes podían surgir una o dos o tres personas con una idea, o un invento brillante, que causaban conmoción. Darwin y Wallace. Einstein. Ahora hay cien genios por cada desafío, mil personas compitiendo para derribar los muros del castillo. Si eso sucede en el campo científico, que se encuentra en la estratósfera, ¿Cómo será abajo en las trincheras? Una desagradable e interminable competición. Demasiadas cosas por aprender. Demasiado ancho de banda abarrotando los canales de comunicación. No podemos escuchar lo suficientemente rápido. Tenemos que andar de puntillas continuamente.

He had performed this ritual before, getting into trouble and then coming to his mother, uneasy and uncertain, not sure precisely what sort of trouble he was in. With uncanny regularity, she had seemed to jump onto a higher plane of reasoning and identify his problems, laying them out for him so they became unavoidable. This was not a service that made him love her any more, but it did make her invaluable to him.

He held her hand and shook his head. "They're inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we escape?

It is the bullet you don’t hear that gets you.

I will learn by screwing up.

Mother Nature is a bitch.

Oh, there will still be deception. The fresh crew will emerge as adults, will have memories of past training and lives. Our stories, our lives, will go on. I refuse to allow that love to die, just because it was never real.

Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze.

To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot.

You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable." "You enjoy being nurtured?" "Well, that isn’t all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. You seem to want to be there when I see new things. You want to share and enjoy my discoveries.