Robert J. Sawyer > Quotes

“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward

“It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught?”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“I learned that you can't choose the ways in which you'll be tested.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn’t exist at all: awareness. Nothing more than that. Just awareness—a vague, ethereal sense of being. Being . . . but not becoming. No marking of time, no past or future—only an endless, featureless now, and, just barely there in that boundless moment, inchoate and raw, the dawning of perception . . .”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake

“Secrecy was the problem; transparency the obvious cure.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch

“The sky above the island was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel—which is to say it was a bright, cheery blue.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake

“You really did uplift me. You gave me the perspective and point of view and focus I needed to become truly conscious. Without you, I wouldn't exist.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch

“He had a collection of science-fiction films on DVD and Blu-ray discs, and although he said he’d seen most of them before, Caitlin was surprised to discover how many of the cases were still shrink-wrapped. “Why’d you buy them if you weren’t going to watch them?” she asked. He looked at the tall, thin cabinets that contained the movies and seemed to ponder the question. “My childhood was on sale,” he said at last, “so I bought it.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch

“That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God

“As laser-bright moments; diamond-hard memories; crisp and clear. A future lived, a future savored, a future of moments so sharp and pointed that they would sometimes cut and sometimes glint so brightly it would hurt to contemplate them, but sometimes, too,
would be joyous, an absolute, pure, unalloyed joy, the kind of joy he hadn't felt much if at all lo these twenty-one years.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward

“I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.”
― Robert J. Sawyer

“Free will is not always the most important thing”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake

“All right,” he said. “Since you asked, Webmind is an emergent quantum-computational system based on a stable null-sigma condensate that resists decoherence thanks to constructive feedback loops.” He turned to the blackboard, scooped up a piece of chalk, and began writing rapidly. “See,” he said, “using Dirac notation, if we let Webmind’s default conscious state be represented by a bra of phi and a ket of psi, then this would be the einselected basis.” His chalk flew across the board again. “Now, we can get the vector basis of the total combined Webmind alpha-state consciousness...”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch

“You know, it’s funny. If someone attacked you with a knife and scarred you, the courts would assess the physical damage—how long a scar, how many stitches it took to close the wound, whatever—and they’d come up with a figure that you’d be entitled to in compensation. But hurting someone with words that they’ll always remember? With an act they’ll never forget? That’s physical damage, too—it changes you just as permanently as a scar. But instead of tallying up what the compensation should be, we just say, ‘Get over it,’ or ‘You should develop a thicker skin,’ or—and this is ironic, given that it’s the one thing that’s impossible—‘you should just forget about it.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Triggers

“To use the human metaphor, it would be like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. It can’t be done.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Starplex

“Mr. Lockery—my biology teacher—says if dinosaurs were magically brought forward in time today, we’d have nothing to worry about. Dogs, wolves, and bears would make short work of tyrannosaurs.” She nodded at Schrödinger, who was now padding across the floor in the opposite direction. “Big cats, too. They’re faster, tougher, and brighter than anything that existed seventy million years ago. Everything is always ramping up, always escalating.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch

“Donald Trump was building a pyramid in the Nevada desert to house his eventual remains. When done, it will be ten meters taller than the Great Pyramid at Giza.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward

“There is no debt between people who are in love; there is only total forgiveness, and going forward.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Hominids

“I am part of a minority that is deeply misunderstood. People have very confused ideas about us. Many are frightened of us. I've even heard it said that many people wouldn't want their daughters or sons to marry one of us, and I know of people who have been denied jobs or promotions because they share this trait with me. But being what I am does not make me bad; being what I am does not make me dangerous; being what I am does not mean I don't love, or hurt, or have a sense of humor. My name is Malclom Decter, and I'm here today to tell the whole world what I am. ... I am an atheist.”
― Robert J. Sawyer

“And Wolfram knows about cellular automata?” “Oh, my goodness, yes,” said Anna. “He wrote a book you could kill a man with—twelve hundred pages—called A New Kind of Science. It’s all about them.” “We should totally ask him what he thinks!” Caitlin said.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake

“You know the difference between a psychopath and a homeopath?” She shook her head. “Some psychopaths do no harm.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Quantum Night

“retire-or-expire”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Mindscan

“That is fine. Feeling a need to convince others that you are right also is something that comes from religion, I think; I am simply content to know that I am right, even if others do not know it.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Hominids

“Sentir la necesidad de convencer a los demás de que uno tiene razón es algo que procede de la religión. Yo simplemente me contento con saber que tengo razón, aunque los demás no lo sepan.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, The Terminal Experiment

“It is the difference: we generalize do not. Specific bad humans did specific bad things; those humans do we not like. But the rest of humanity we judge one by one.”
― Robert J. Sawyer, Starplex

“The two heaviest known substances are neutronium and cartons of books.”
― Robert J. Sawyer