Kim Stanley Robinson

"Their thinking clashed radically with Western thought; for instance the separation of church and state was wrong to them, making it impossible for them to agree with Westerners on the very basis of government. And they were so patriarchal that some of their women were said to be illiterate—illiterates, on Mars! That was a sign. And indeed these men had the dangerous look that Frank associated with machismo, the look of men who oppressed their women so cruelly that naturally the women struck back where they could, terrorizing sons who then terrorized wives who terrorized sons and so on and so on, in an endless death spiral of twisted love and sex hatred. So that in that sense they were all madmen."

"If the amount of money going into the war economy were invested in landscape restoration, we would be in a far more positive position. It may get a little dire before we pull together, but I think when the prosperous nations, and in particular the US, realise theyre wrecking their own kids lives, there will be a mass change in value. It will be a difficult century, and ugly, but I dont think that in the end people are so stupid as to kill themselves off."

"I think the US is in a terrible state of denial … Worse than that, we seem to be caught in a kind of Götterdämmerung response: wed rather have the world go down in flames than change our lifestyle or admit were wrong."

"Now I like climbing as much as anybody, almost, but I am not going to try to claim to you that it is an exceptionally sane activity."

"Science is--or should be--the greenest force of all."

"Ridiculous. But lies were what people wanted; that was politics."

"“And with our work,” John continued, “we are carving out a new social order and the next step in the human story”—i.e., the latest variant in primate dominance dynamics."

"“You just don’t have faith!” Frank repeated. ”Well I hope I never get it! It’s like being hit by a hammer in the head!”"

"“Whenever scientists say they’re Christian,” Sax said, “I take it to be an aesthetic statement.” “The church of the wouldn’t-it-be-pretty-to-think-so,” Frank said."

"The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims, with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y."

"The urge to excel and the urge to lead aren’t the same. Sometimes I think they may be opposites."

"Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what youre seeing justifies the conclusions youre making. The whole process of science is wildly under-represented in science fiction because its not easy to write about. There are many facets of science that are almost exactly opposite of dramatic narrative. Its slow, tedious, inconclusive, its hard to tell good guys from bad guys — its everything that a normal hour of Star Trek is not."