Adam Roberts

"Nobody can overthrow the fascist dictator by being nicer than him. The reason for this is: by definition everybody is always already nicer than the fascist dictator."

"But once we are free...once we have evolved beyond the old medieval power structures and the medieval internecine violence they create, then we’ll be able to use the technology responsibly. Everything…"

"She had expected to encounter death as a kind of existential depth and had been disappointed. But maybe there was a deeper truth there. Maybe profundity actually is a mode of disappointment. The rhyth…"

"As far as dreams were concerned—well dreams are generated by the random processes of neural oscillation during the brain’s rest phases. What dreams do is cycle and recycle images and feelings, rationa…"

"She didn’t have to believe the technology existed. She only had to believe that people believed the technology existed. People, being stupid, believed all sorts of things."

"“The future cannot be won with the weapons of the past,” insisted Dakkar. “To rise up like Spartacus will only lead to millions of ordinary people being crucified, and the Caesars—and Czars—retaining …"

"It could be any one of a dozen things. Experience has taught me that we much more often see connection where there is only random copresence. Pattern-seeking consciousness, you know. Great plains ape,…"

"One of the curiosities of anger, of course, is that the more you focus it outward, firing it at the injustices of the world, the more it actually parses your own self-pity and resentment."