Best 18 quotes of Ben Bova on MyQuotes

Ben Bova

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not about political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time. All of the people of the Earth are in a desperate race against disaster... To save the Earth we must look beyond it, to interplanetary space. To present the collapse of civilization and the end of the world as we know it, we must understand that our planet does not exist in isolation.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not [about] political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    As long as we're tied to Middle Eastern oil we're tied to Middle Eastern politics. We're hostages to the terrorists and nutcases who want to wipe out Israel and the United States because we support Israel.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    Don't ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    Feeding the starving poor only increases their number.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    In science there is a dictum: don't add an experiment to an experiment. Don't make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don't ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    I think it's perfectly OK to exploit the moon. Largely for two reasons: there's no life there, and it is close enough and rich enough in resources to be economically useful to Earth. In the final analysis, everything we do in space, if it does not help the people of Earth, all the people, it's not going to happen.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    My first published novel was written for teenagers, and there were rules laid down by the publisher: no sex, no smoking, no swearing. I blew up entire solar systems, I consigned billions of people to horrible death; they didn't seem to mind that at all. But no hanky-panky.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    Omni is not a science magazine. It is a magazine about the future...Omni was sui generis. Although there were plenty of science magazines over the years...Omni was the first magazine to slant all its pieces toward the future. It was fun to read and gorgeous to look at.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    Red tape has killed more people than bullets.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    The Old Ones knew that life is not rare, but precious; not fragile, but vulnerable. Life is as deep as the seas in which it was born, as strong as the mountains that give it shelter, as universal as the stars themselves.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    Up here [in space], you're free. Really free, for the first time in your life. All the laws and rules and prejudices they've been dumping on you all your life . . . they're all down there. Up here it's a new start. You can be yourself and do your own thing . . . and nobody can tell you different.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    When I started understanding how science works, it occurred to me that there just is no evidence that there is a God.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    He did not appear to be a very tall man; what I could see of legs seemed stumpy, though heavily muscled. His chest was broad and deep. Later I learned that he swam in the sea almost every morning. His thick strong arms were circled with leather wristbands and a bronze armlet above his left elbow that gleamed with polished onyx and lapis lazuli... Puckered white scars from old wounds stood out against the dark skin of his arms, parting the black hairs like roads through a forest... Odysseos wore a sleeveless tunic, his legs and feet bare, but he had thrown a lamb's fleece across his wide shoulders. His face was thickly bearded with dark curly hair that showed a trace of grey. His heavy mop of ringlets came down to his shoulders and across his forehead almost down to his black eyebrows. Those eyes were as grey as the sea outside on this rainy afternoon, probing, searching, judging.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    My first sight of the fabled warrior was a surprise. He was not a mighty-thewed giant, like Ajax. His body was not broad and powerful, as Odysseos'. He seemed small, almost boyish, his bare arms and legs slim and virtually hairless. His chin was shaved clean, and the ringlets of his long black hair were tied up in a silver chain. He wore a splendid white silk tunic, bordered with a purple key design, cinched at the waist with a belt of interlocking gold crescents... His face was the greatest shock. Ugly, almost to the point of being grotesque. Narrow beady eyes, lips curled in a perpetual snarl, a sharp hook of a nose, skin pocked and cratered... A small ugly boy born to be a king... A young man possessed with fire to silence the laughter, to stifle the taunting. His slim arms and legs were iron-hard, knotted with muscle. His dark eyes were absolutely humourless. There was no doubt in my mind that he could outfight Odysseos or even powerful Ajax on sheer willpower alone.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    The art of fiction has not changed much since prehistoric times. The formula for telling a powerful story has remained the same: create a strong character, a person of great strengths, capable of deep emotions and decisive action. Give him a weakness. Set him in conflict with another powerful character -- or perhaps with nature. Let his exterior conflict be the mirror of the protagonist's own interior conflict, the clash of his desires, his own strength against his own weakness. And there you have a story. Whether it's Abraham offering his only son to God, or Paris bringing ruin to Troy over a woman, or Hamlet and Claudius playing their deadly game, Faust seeking the world's knowledge and power -- the stories that stand out in the minds of the reader are those whose characters are unforgettable. To show other worlds, to describe possible future societies and the problems lurking ahead, is not enough. The writer of science fiction must show how these worlds and these futures affect human beings. And something much more important: he must show how human beings can and do literally create these future worlds. For our future is largely in our own hands. It doesn't come blindly rolling out of the heavens; it is the joint product of the actions of billions of human beings. This is a point that's easily forgotten in the rush of headlines and the hectic badgering of everyday life. But it's a point that science fiction makes constantly: the future belongs to us -- whatever it is. We make it, our actions shape tomorrow. We have the brains and guts to build paradise (or at least try). Tragedy is when we fail, and the greatest crime of all is when we fail even to try. Thus science fiction stands as a bridge between science and art, between the engineers of technology and the poets of humanity.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    The most arduous part of learning is preparing the mind to accept new knowledge.

  • By Anonym
    Ben Bova

    There was precious little nobility in the features of the High King's fleshy face. Like his body, his face was broad and heavy, with a wide stub of a nose, a thick brow, and deep-set eyes that seemed to look out at the world with suspicion and resentment. His hair and beard were just beginning to turn grey, but they were well combed and glistening with fresh oil perfumed... heavily... He was broad of shoulder and body, built like a squat turret, round and thick from neck to hips. He wore a sleeveless coat of gilded chain mail over his tunic... Over the mail was a harness of gleaming leather, with silver buckles and ornaments. A jewelled sword hung at his side. His sandals had gold tassels on their thongs.