"He wanted to be who he was, not the person he would become if he lost the one trait that distinguished him from everybody else, no matter how perverse that decision seemed to others."

Iain Banks Literature See all quotes by Iain Banks →

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“The double-sun system was relatively poor in comets; there were only a hundred billion of them.”

“How depressing, the Sleeper Service thought. That it should all come down to this; the person with the biggest stick prevails.”

“I am, as I have always been, of the opinion that while the niceties of normal moral constraints should be our guides, they must not be our masters.”

“It was like living half your life in a tiny, stuffy, warm gray box, and being moderately happy in there because you knew no better...and then discovering a little hole in one corner of the box, a tiny opening which you could get a finger into, and tease and pull at, so that eventually you created a tear, which led to a greater tear, which led to the box falling apart around you...so that you stepped out of the tiny box’s confines into startlingly cool, clear fresh air and found yourself on top of a mountain, surrounded by deep valleys, sighing forests, soaring peaks, glittering lakes, sparkling snowfields and a stunning, breathtakingly blue sky. And that, of course, wasn’t even the start of the real story, that was more like the breath that is drawn in before the first syllable of the first word of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the first book of the first volume of the story.”

“All the usual rules of uprising realpolitik still apply, especially that concerning the peculiar of dialectic of dissent which—simply stated—dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more; an equation based on human nature which seem often to baffle the military and political mind.”

“Pity they didn’t devote a little more ingenuity to staying alive rather than conducting mass slaughter as efficiently as possible.”

Resonant Thoughts

"I really wanted to retire and rest and spend more time with my children, my grandchildren and of course with my wife. But the problems are such that for anybody with a conscience who can use whatever …"

— Nelson Mandela

Politics1918–2013

#family

"The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wou…"

— William S. Burroughs

Literature1914–1997

#knowledge

"The right hon. Gentleman has argued, that the adoption of the plan proposed by the Government would confer advantage on the consumer, would increase the revenue, and would give increased scope to the …"

— William Ewart Gladstone

Politics1809–1898

#Human Nature

"My growing environmental awareness only added more fuel to the argument for having no children. And the logic of never-ending consumption didn't just harm the environment, it killed people too."

— Xiaolu Guo

Education1973

#family