Bova Quotes & Sayings

He was close enough so that I could see his face clearly, even with his helmet's cheek flaps tied tightly under his bearded chin. I looked into the eyes of Hector, prince of Troy. Brown eyes they were, the colour of rich farm soil, calm and deep. No anger, no battle lust. He was a cool and calculating warrior, a thinker among these hordes of wild, screaming brutes. He wore a small round shield buckled to his left arm instead of the massive body-length type most of the other nobles carried. In it was painted a flying heron, a strangely peaceful emblem in the midst of all this mayhem and gore. — Ben Bova

Do not contemplate the Essence of the UnVeiled, for the UnVeiled therein your World does not hold to polarities, nor of your conjectures; Chapter The Unveiling — AainaA-Ridtz

Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written. — James Nicoll

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. — Ben Bova

As anyone who's ever been to a doctor knows, doctors are not necessarily your friends, any more than mail deliverers are you friends, or butchers are you friends, or refrigerator repair-people are you friends. A doctor is a man or woman whose job it is to make you feel better, that's all, and if you've ever had a shot you know that the statement 'Doctors can't hurt you' is simply absurd. — Lemony Snicket

Without Jimmy Dean, the Beatles never would have existed. — John Lennon

We're going to have to let truth scream louder to our souls than the lies that have infected us. — Beth Moore

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. — Ben Bova

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

Red tape has killed more people than bullets... — Ben Bova

The term sci-fi, which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse. — Ben Bova

Years ago, it was easier to make new things than it is now. The weight of experience weighs heavily, and the expectations; everybody wants to see something they haven't seen before. Now, with social media, with too much information, with the speed of information - all that is making it harder and harder to realize the objective. — Rei Kawakubo

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. — 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. — Ben Bova

Volunteering is also now more crucial than ever in helping people find work. — Boris Johnson

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. — 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. — Ben Bova

Feeding the starving poor only increases their number. — Ben Bova

A Teacher is no good without the student and the student is no good without the teacher. — Larry Earl Toombs

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. — Ben Bova

We're going in really fresh. We're going to have fresh legs and bodies, we're going to be able to stay the distance, and that's our goal. — Serena Williams

A fanatic who is willing to die for his cause thinks nothing of killing you for his cause. — 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. — Ben Bova

Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over. — William Shakespeare

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. — Ben Bova

Every time you run a 35mm print, it picks up scratches. It picks up dirt. Sometimes it breaks, and you have to re-splice it. You lose frames. This doesn't happen with digital or Blu-ray. I think that's great. Because I love the new media. — William Friedkin

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. — Ben Bova

atrocities, and gladly executes it. But Rahm — Lynn Murphy

Don't think your testimony is meaningless if you didn't have a dramatic conversion. Every conversion cost the same amount of Christ's blood shed on the cross. Yours is just as meaningful as the most dramatic conversion ever told. — Beth Moore

In acting, you get to explore such an artistic side with different characters to research and learn and explore different things inside yourself and I do that anyway, so I might as well be doing something that I already do, as in a second nature to me, on film. — Gina Carano

Lolling around libraries paging through books that haven't been checked out since 1975 is one of my principal joys as a writer. — Ben Bova

Population growing, swelling, bursting beyond the capability of the world to sustain so many human beings. Six billion people. Eight. Ten. Most of them starving, diseased, born in miserable poverty and dying in miserable poverty; surviving only long enough to make still more babies, half a million more each day. — 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. — Ben Bova

Soap opera wouldn't be my first choice, but at this point in my life, I would consider a soap. It would allow me to act and still do other things with my life. — Joe Lando

We try to teach our students how to think ... how to use their brains and imagination. Individual subjects can always be learned by a man who knows how to learn. We teach them to think, and the other subjects arise by themselves ... — Ben Bova

The problem is that Americans would like to be independent of the rest of the world ... Except the world ain't that way. Trying to be independent of the rest of the world is to commit suicide. — Ben Bova