David Brin
Well-known American author of science fiction.
A hallmark of sanity, Alex, is the courage to face even unpleasant points of view.
The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.
Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.
Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain reaction.
What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.
Had I been wrong, this would still have been the honorable thing to do.
I am very glad, however, to find out that I was right.
Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this ... say so!
He wasn’t afraid of dying, only of having not done all he could, and not properly spitting in the eye of death when it came for him. That final gesture was important.
"Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear."
“All this talk of using tax policy to ‘assess social costs’...what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.”
Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.
"In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism."
“Huh,” Sepak thought, marveling how much one could learn by just sitting still and observing. It wasn’t a skill one learned in the frenetic pace of modern society.
It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.
A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.
On this occasion, despite the wind and sparkling stars, they looked just like huge chunks of stone, pathetically chiseled by desperate folk to resemble stern gods. People did bizarre things when they were afraid...as most men and women had been for nearly all the time since the species evolved.
From you, my boy, I expect no less than the completely preposterous and utterly calamitous.
Words penetrated the tank from the outer room. They were tantalizing, like those ghosts of meaning in a great symphony—hinting that the composer had caught a glimpse of something notes could only vaguely convey and words could never even approach.
He was, after all, a diplomat, and understood that the best and firmest deals are based on open self-interest.
Life is not fair...Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.