Poul Anderson Quotes & Sayings

In my considered opinion, the profit to be made by permanent settlement in space is nothing less than the survival of industrial civilization, and therefore the survival of nearly the entire human race, along with such amenities as peace, freedom, enough to eat, and the chance to reach a high age in good health. — Poul Anderson

My knowledge of the human psyche is as yet imperfect. Certain areas won't yield to computation. — Poul Anderson

We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them? — Poul Anderson

for a moment infinitesimal and infinite, men, women, child, ship, and death were one. It — Poul Anderson

Why do most people think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe? — Poul Anderson

A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right. — Poul Anderson

So softly you hear it now, Mary O'Meara, but soon it comes joyful and clear.
And soon in the shadow and dew of your hilltop a star-guided footfall rings near.
My only beloved, I'm here. — Poul Anderson

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants. — Poul Anderson

Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise. — Poul Anderson

If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it. — Poul Anderson

I'll have to jump around like sodium in the rain. — Poul Anderson

The same fight was being waged, here the Nazis and there the Middle World; but in both places, Chaos against Law, something old and wild and blind at war with man and the works of man. — Poul Anderson

Timidity can be as dangerous as rashness. — Poul Anderson

In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic aspects of a human personality into a machine program. — Poul Anderson

Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel. — Poul Anderson

Who can we trust with a monopoly of the planet killer weapons and unlimited powers of inspection and arrest? Why, a country big and modern enough to make peace-keeping a major industry; but not big enough to conquer anyone else or force its will on anyone without the support of a majority of nations; and reasonably well thought of by everyone. In short, Sweden. — Poul Anderson

I am told that our chroniclers' practice of inventing speeches for great persons whose lives they write is unscholarly. — Poul Anderson

That,' he confessed aloud, 'was as ludicrous a case of mutual ineptitude as the gods of slapstick ever engineered. We both deserve to be tickled to death by small green centipedes. Well ... if you keep quiet about it, I will. — Poul Anderson

Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate. — Poul Anderson

Magic!' cried an old man. 'Tis sorcery, and we are undone!' 'Not so,' I told him, 'Sorcery cannot harm good Christians.' 'But I am a miserable sinner,' he wailed. — Poul Anderson

Momentarily a wing of zodiacal radiance could be seen, like a halo over the rising fire-disk. — Poul Anderson

Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell. — Poul Anderson

We can't go on ... having regular bowel movements ... while creation happens! — Poul Anderson

There are some ideas so stupid that only intellectuals can believe in them, particularly left-wing intellectuals. — Poul Anderson

I've yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way didn't become still more complicated. — Poul Anderson

The fish that first ventured ashore had considerable practical problems. — Poul Anderson

A fanatic's willingness to kill or be killed in the service of a cause cannot prove the rightness of that cause. — Poul Anderson

A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort. — Poul Anderson

What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well ... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for. — Poul Anderson

Will none wipe the sneer of the face of the cosmos? — Poul Anderson

Give fear no hold on you. Keep sinews loose and senses open, ready at every instant to flow with the rush of action. — Poul Anderson

Poor old G.K.C.! It's too bad he didn't live to see the change. What paradoxes he would have dreamed up! — Poul Anderson

So much American science fiction is parochial
not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way ... — Poul Anderson

Ninety-nine per cent of the human race, no matter how smart they are, will do the convenient thing instead of the wise thing, and kid themselves into thinking they can somehow escape the consequences. — Poul Anderson

It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room. — Poul Anderson

Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery — Poul Anderson

He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it. — Poul Anderson

Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk. — Poul Anderson

I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on ... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science. — Poul Anderson

At each stage ... entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. — Poul Anderson

The fact is, man has never stayed by a single ideal. The mass enthusiasm when you were young gave way to cool, rationalistic classicism. Today that's being drowned in turn by a kind of neoromanticism. God knows where that will lead. I probably won't approve. Regardless, new generations grow up. We've no right to freeze them into our own mold. The universe is too wide. — Poul Anderson

If nothing else, we today need a reminder that we must never take civilization for granted. I — Poul Anderson

Their flight was not less exhilarating for being explainable. — Poul Anderson

You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen. — Poul Anderson

These lands are not always calm. We may well have more adventures ahead of us. But we shall meet them with high hearts. — Poul Anderson

Machines can only find what ignorant men have programmed them to find. — Poul Anderson

I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.
-Poul_Anderson — Poul Anderson

A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die. — Poul Anderson

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated. — Poul Anderson