64 Quotes by Ada Palmer

Oh, miraculous chameleon, science, who can reverse your doctrine hourly and never shake our faith! What cult ever battered by this world of doubt can help but envy you?

In darker ages Justice stood alone before courthouses, but in Carlyle’s vision her sister Temperance stands to one side holding back her sword, while from the other side Reason lifts away her blindfold, so Justice can finally see the contents of her scales.

There has to be an Outsider or the next strangest will be named Outsider.

I think all human beings, even I who have no right to ask more of the world, wish to see the future. I don’t mean the whole future; after a millennium history must progress beyond one’s ability to understand.

Truth is water in a sieve. It’s not enough to put your hand across the holes and hope.

Ah, reader, I understand it is your kindness which fills you with this hubris, but it is hubris still. You presume, not only to advise your Maker, but to demand that He respond to your advice by revising the infinite and perfect Plan of His Creation precisely as you – with your flawed and finite wisdom – recommend?

Heartless reality does not grant humans the lifespan necessary to master every specialty of science, so no one genius in his secret lab can really bring robots, mutants, and clones into the world at his mad whim – it takes a team, masses of funds, and decades. But one man can love all sciences, even if he cannot wield them, and he can inspire children with the model of the mad genius, even if he cannot live it.

This world is far from perfect, but people have never been happier, healthier, more productive, more free, more equal. We have a lot of improvements still to make, but we’ve come a long way compared to any older era.

Nothing under Providence is ever certain until an agent goes and tries and makes it so.