Poul Anderson Quotes

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• I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.

  Poul Anderson

  Art, Writing, Thinking

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• The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

  Poul Anderson

  Government, Organization, People

  Poul Anderson (2014). “The Avatar”, p.32, Open Road Media

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• I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

  Poul Anderson

  Motivational, Witty, Truth

  Quoted in New Scientist, 25 Sept. 1969

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• Happier are all men than the dwellers in Faerie – or the gods, for that matter…Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness that can see naught above or beyond itself…the day draws nigh when Faerie shall fade, the Erlking himself shrink to a woodland sprite and then to nothing, and the gods go under. And the worst of it is, I cannot believe it wrong that the immortals will not live forever.

  Poul Anderson

  Stars, Believe, Fall

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• We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?

  Poul Anderson

  Writing, Archetype

  Poul Anderson (2003). “Going For Infinity: A Literary Journey”, p.655, Macmillan

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• Timidity can be as dangerous as rashness.

  Poul Anderson

  Dangerous, Rashness, Timidity

  Poul Anderson (2003). “Going For Infinity: A Literary Journey”, p.20, Macmillan

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• A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die.

  Poul Anderson

  Men, Alive, Littles

  Poul Anderson (2015). “Starfarers”, p.488, Open Road Media

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• A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.

  Poul Anderson

  Men, Sight, Effort

  Poul Anderson (2015). “Harvest of Stars”, p.41, Open Road Media

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• So much American science fiction is parochial - not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way.

  Poul Anderson

  Technology, Years, Way

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• He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.

  Poul Anderson

  Science, Men, Too Much

  Poul Anderson (2015). “Starfarers”, p.483, Open Road Media

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• In my considered opinion, the profit to be made by permanent settlement in space is nothing less than the survival of industrial civilization, and therefore the survival of nearly the entire human race, along with such amenities as peace, freedom, enough to eat, and the chance to reach a high age in good health.

  Poul Anderson

  Space, Race, Civilization

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• Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.

  Poul Anderson

  Drunk, Serious Business, Settling

  Poul Anderson (2015). “Fire Time”, p.27, Open Road Media

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• Machines can only find what ignorant men have programmed them to find.

  Poul Anderson

  Men, Ignorant, Machines

  Poul Anderson, Jack Dann, Michael Orgill, George Zebrowski (1977). “A world named Cleopatra”

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• Colonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate.

  Poul Anderson

  Mean, Men, Space

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• What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for.

  Poul Anderson

  Zero, Book, Journey

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• These lands are not always calm. We may well have more adventures ahead of us. But we shall meet them with high hearts.

  Poul Anderson

  Heart, Adventure, Land

  Poul Anderson (2008). “The Van Rijn Method”, p.61, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen.

  Poul Anderson

  Becoming, Knows

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• If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.

  Poul Anderson

  Exploration, Reason, Solar System

  Poul Anderson (2008). “The Van Rijn Method”, p.54, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• A fanatic's willingness to kill or be killed in the service of a cause cannot prove the rightness of that cause.

  Poul Anderson

  Peace, War, Causes

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• My knowledge of the human psyche is as yet imperfect. Certain areas won't yield to computation.

  Poul Anderson

  Yield, Statistics, Imperfect

  Poul Anderson (2003). “Going For Infinity: A Literary Journey”, p.525, Macmillan

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• Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery

  Poul Anderson

  Destiny, Two, Bravery

  Poul Anderson (2015). “The Stars Are Also Fire”, p.10, Open Road Media

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• Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell.

  Poul Anderson

  Heaven, Hell, Literal

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• I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.

  Poul Anderson

  Stars, Book, Writing

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• Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.

  Poul Anderson

  Wise, Stars, Fall

  Poul Anderson (2014). “The Broken Sword”, p.234, Open Road Media

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• Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.

  Poul Anderson

  Infinite, Figures, Navel

  Poul Anderson (2015). “Harvest of Stars”, p.366, Open Road Media

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