Spider Robinson Quotes & Sayings

Pain shared is pain lessened; joy shared is joy increased. Thus do we refute entropy. — Spider Robinson

This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving
and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. This is what it is to be human: to persist. — Spider Robinson

Callahan's Law:
Shared pain is lessened;
Shared joy is increased. — Spider Robinson

You become uneasy with people in direct proportion to how many lies you have to keep track of in their presence. — Spider Robinson

Information can't be put in any container that isn't leaky. — Spider Robinson

God is an iron ... and that's a hot one. — Spider Robinson

Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity. — Spider Robinson

...I know good design when I fail to trip over it. — Spider Robinson

She danced because she needed to. She needed to say things which could be said in no other way, and she needed to take her meaning and her living from the saying of them. — Spider Robinson

Librarians are like crack dealers when it comes to hooking small children. — Spider Robinson

A beginning is the end of something, always. — Spider Robinson

Sexual intercourse vests no property rights. — Spider Robinson

It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? — Spider Robinson

There's nothing in the human heart or mind, no place no matter how twisted or secret, that can't be endured - if you have someone to share it with. — Spider Robinson

Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss one off. — Spider Robinson

To be human : to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. — Spider Robinson

The whole world turns upside down in ten years, but you turn upside down with it. — Spider Robinson

To all the Callahan's Places there ever were or ever will be, whatever they may be called - and to all the merry maniacs and happy fools who are fortunate enough to stumble into one: may none of them arrive too late! — Spider Robinson

I had not until then fully realized that I was odd, that there was anything strange about growing up with a single-parent genius. I thought all homes had equations scrawled with disc-marker across all the cabinets and walls, and clean laundry in the freezer, and defrosting chicken in the tool drawer. I thought everyone read a book a day and listened to hours of ancient music. — Spider Robinson

We are all time travelers moving at the speed of exactly 60 minutes per hour. — Spider Robinson

Art takes whatever - and as long as - it takes. — Spider Robinson

Me, I have a science fiction writer's conviction that the damn robot is supposed to speak
human, not the other way around. — Spider Robinson

The delusion that one's sexual pattern is The Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim's fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observing reality. — Spider Robinson

Dreams should be forgotten when we wake. Or one day we will find ourselves unable to sleep. — Spider Robinson

Mankind is divided into two basic sorts: those who find the unknown future threatening ... and those who find it thrilling. The rupture between those two sides has been responsible for most of the bloodshed in history. — Spider Robinson

He smiled like a sun lamp. — Spider Robinson

honesty is hard work. — Spider Robinson

Hey Jake. I got an idea.'
'Be gentle with it,' the Doc grinned. 'It's in a strange place. — Spider Robinson

Progress is something with no pity, and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew, and spits out things you can't understand, and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money. — Spider Robinson

Quite frankly, I don't like you humans. After what you all have done,
I find being 'inhuman' a compliment. — Spider Robinson

Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me ... only he's an imbecile. — Spider Robinson

Shared pain is lessened.
Shared joy is increased.
Thus we refute entropy. — Spider Robinson

I conclude you must be a natural horses's ass. — Spider Robinson

You know what gives me the courage to keep on living? The courage to love myself a little? It's having a whole bunch of friends who really give a goddamn. When you share pain, there's less of it, and when you share joy, there's more of it. — Spider Robinson

... when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence ... in love, never settle ... value yourself first and this will help you to value others ... life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest ... everyone in the world is different, and that's ok ... — Spider Robinson

And I repeat: if there is anything that can divert the land of my birth from its current stampede into the Stone Age, it is the widespread dissemination of the thoughts and perceptions that Robert Heinlein has been selling as entertainment since 1939. — Spider Robinson

anger is always fear in disguise — Spider Robinson

Shared joy is increased, shared pain is lessened. — Spider Robinson

And I'm a pair of pants with a hole scorched through the ass? — Spider Robinson

Anger is always - always - fear in disguise. — Spider Robinson

it's better than a stick in the eye — Spider Robinson

Well, some men learn by listening, some read, some observe and analyze - and some of us just have to pee on the electric fence. — Spider Robinson

Smugness was an art invented by the race of imps, no matter what cats might claim, so he did it very well indeed, — Spider Robinson

Your diet must be about fifty-fifty, carrots and locoweed," Annie said softly.
He froze.
"I can't figure out what in the name of God's labia majora you think you're doing ... but I'm impressed by how well you're doing it in the dark. You must have eyes like a cat. — Spider Robinson

It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun that you can have out of bed ... to learn that the smart man finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that "leisure" time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that is its subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse newer, better work. — Spider Robinson

Euphemisms are for the differently brained. — Spider Robinson

Now that I finally have the time for it, this web surfing stuff turns out to be as interesting and fun and addictive as you've all been telling me. Zipping from link to link, chasing an idea across the noosphere, sucking up information like a killer whale - way cool. — Spider Robinson

If you've lived a bad life, they send you to Hell. But if you've been truly wicked, they give you a tour of
Heaven first ... — Spider Robinson

It's always coldest before the warm. — Spider Robinson

Perhaps you've heard the one about the difference between a bass player and a large pepperoni pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four. I — Spider Robinson

Just as there are laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other. — Spider Robinson

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron. — Spider Robinson

We did make use, from time to time, of candles, neckties, scarves, shoelaces, a little water-color paintbrush, her hairbrush, butter, whipped cream, strawberry jam, Johnson's Baby Oil, my Swedish hand vibrator, a fascinating bead necklace she had, miscellaneous common household items, and every molecule of flesh that was exposed to air or could be located with strenuous search. — Spider Robinson

Some guys step on a rake in the dark, and get mad and go punch somebody. Others step on a rake in the dark and fall down laughing at themselves. I know which kind of guy I'd rather be. So do my friends. — Spider Robinson

I'm going to live forever, or die trying ! — Spider Robinson

Patriotism does not mean that you think your country is perfect, or blameless, or even particularly likeable on balance; nor does it mean that you serve it blindly, go where it tells you to go and kill whom it tells you to kill. It means that you are committed to keeping it alive and making it better, that you will do whatever seems necessary (up to and including dying) to protect it whenever you, personally, perceive a mortal threat to it, military or otherwise. — Spider Robinson

Man, you're no smarter than me. You're just a fancier kind of stupid. — Spider Robinson

I think of us as a people who inoculate ourselves against a plague of insanity with a powerful anti-idiotic called science fiction. I think sf is a literature which by its very nature requires that you be at least a little sane, that you know at least a little something. You must abdicate the right to be ignorant in order to enjoy science fiction, which most people are unwilling to do; and you must learn, if not actually how to think things through, at least what the trick looks like when it's done. Frequent injections will keep a lot of madness away. — Spider Robinson

Time didn't pass; it tailgated. — Spider Robinson

The problems of today's youth were no longer a Sunday supplement, or a news broadcast, or anything so remote and intangible. They were suddenly become a dirty, shivering boy, who told us that in this world we had built for him with our sweat and our blood, he was not only tired of living, but so unscared of dying that he did it daily, sometimes for recreation. — Spider Robinson

In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system! — Spider Robinson

The day Apollo 11 landed, I knew men would walk on Mars in my lifetime. I'm no longer nearly so sure. The last budget put forward in Canada contained not a penny for Mars. — Spider Robinson

One of the secret masters of
the world: a librarian. They
control information. Don't ever p**s one off. — Spider Robinson

And there's this place called college! I mean, they want you to care, dig it, care about this education trip, and they don't care enough themselves to make it as attractive as the crap game across the street! — Spider Robinson