David Brin Quotes

You don't have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

The village is coming back, like it or not.

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.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

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.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.

Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.

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.

Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.

History and geology show what an eyeblink it's been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.

Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.

Petals floating by, Drift through my woman's hand, As she remembers me.

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?

I would normally never set out to write a trilogy.

Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy... in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of Nature

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring

Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from

If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.'

The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

Reciprocal accountability, or criticism [is] the only known antidote to error.

In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it's not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.

I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.

Life is not fair... Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.

Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.

A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.

Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.

The three basic material rights -- continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness.

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.

What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?

Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.

Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.

Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.

One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic events

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.

I find humans tremendously interesting

With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world.

Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.

My education and background thoroughly inform my writing

Change is the very fabric of our time.

Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.

But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.

It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.