Iain Banks

"Whenever one was struck by a previously unlikely-seeming idea that had come to appear plausible or even sensible, one ought to apply that test: was it inherently any more likely than solipsism? If solipsism seemed to make just as much sense, then the idea could be dismissed."

"Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it."

"Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration."

"While the forces of repression need to win every time, the progressive elements need only triumph once."

"I looked at Li. “An argument? All right; you—anybody—taking command of the ship is like a flea taking over control of a human... maybe even like a bacteria in their saliva taking them over.” “But why should it command itself? We made it; it didn’t make us.” “So? And anyway we didn’t make it; other machines made it... and even they only started it off; it mostly made itself. But anyway, you’d have to go back... I don’t know how many thousand generations of its ancestors before you found the last computer or spaceship built directly by any of our ancestors. Even if this mythical ‘we’ had built it, it’s still zillions of times smarter than we are. Would you let an ant tell you what to do?” “Bacterium? Flea? Ant? Make up your mind.” “Oh go away and de-scale a mountain or something, you silly man.” “But we started all this; if it hadn’t been for us—” “And who started us? Some glop of goo on another rockball? A supernova? The big bang? What’s starting something got to do with it?” “You don’t think I’m serious, do you?” “More terminal than serious.”"

"It is the case that because Free Enterprise got there first and set up the house rules, it will always stay at least one kick ahead of its rivals. Thus, while it takes Soviet Russia a vast amount of time and hard work to produce one inspired lunatic like Lysenko, the West can so arrange things that even the dullest farmer can see it makes more sense to burn his grain, melt his butter, and wash away the remains of his pulped vegetables with his tanks of unused wine than it does to actually sell the stuff to be consumed. And note that even if this mythical yokel did decide to sell the stuff, or even give it away—the Earthers have an even more devastating trick they can perform; they show you that those foods aren’t even needed anyway! They wouldn’t feed the least productive, most unimportant untouchable from Pradesh, tribesperson from Darfur, or peon from Rio Branco! The Earth has more than enough to feed all its inhabitants every day already! A truth so seemingly world-shattering one wonders that the oppressed of Earth don’t rise up in flames and anger yesterday! But they don’t, because they are so infected with the myth of self-interested advancement, or the poison of religion acceptance, they either only want to make their own way up the pile so they can shit upon everybody else, or actually feel grateful for the attention when their so-called betters shit on them! It is my contention that this is either an example of the most formidable and blissfully arrogant use of power and existing advantage... or scarcely credible stupidity."

"Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present."

"“Don’t you have a religion?” Dorolow asked Horza. “Yes,” he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. “My survival.”"

"It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting—corruption and favoritism, mostly—endemic to the system."

"Empires are synonymous with centralized — if occasionally schismatized — hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through — usually — a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society’s information dissemination systems and its lesser — as a rule nominally independent — power systems. In short, it’s all about dominance."

"“You like music, Mr. Gurgeh?” Hamin asked, leaning over to the man. Gurgeh nodded. “Well, a little does no harm.”"

"We created something a little closer to perfection than ourselves; maybe that’s the only way to progress. Let them try to do the same. I doubt they can, so they will always be less as well as more than us. It’s all just a sum, a whispered piece of figuring lost in the empty blizzards of white noise howling through the universe, a brief oasis in an infinite desert, a freak bit of working out in which we have transcended ourselves, and they are only the remainder."