Poul Anderson on Mind

"Heim ignored the mob scene on the 3V, rested his eyes on the cold serenity of the Milky Way and thought that this, at least, would endure."

"“Don’t talk, you,” he said. “It hurts my ears. Nor think; that hurts your head.’"

"I think most human misery is due to well-meaning fanatics like him."

"Keep on thinking. Keep your thinking close to the ground, where it belongs. Don’t ever trade your liberty for another man’s offer to do your thinking and make your mistakes for you."

"I do not think the coerced mind ever really learns an art."

"And ninety-nine percent of the human race, no matter how smart they are, will do the convenient thing instead of the wise thing, and kid themselves into thinking they can somehow escape the consequences. We’re just built that way."

"Inland, all except criminals lived in a tightly pulled net of regulations, duties, social standing, tax collection, expectations of how to act and speak and think—“sort of like late twentieth-century USA” Everard grumbled to himself."

"Think. You have had your dealings with our bureaucracy. It is impossible not to, especially if one is a foreigner. Believe me, when we set our minds to it we can tangle, obstruct, and bring to a dead halt a herd of stampeding elephants."

"Collectively as well as individually, man is never going to find perfection. Some societies he builds may work better, for the majority anyhow, than others. But all of them will have their built-in drawbacks. Their affairs will always be conducted with a high irreducible minimum of inefficiency. Read: sentimentalism, magical thinking, shortsightedness, vanity, greed, envy, hate, fear – not because we are evil but because we are mortal."