218 Quotes by Iain Banks

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite

A guilty system recognizes no innocents.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

Torture is such a slippery slope; as soon as you allow a society or any legal system to do that, almost instantly you get a situation where people are being tortured for very trivial reasons.

Smell is a very animal thing, almost reptilian, where the more cerebral things like reading less so.

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.

Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

I think a lot of people are frightened of technology and frightened of change, and the way to deal with something you're frightened of is to make fun of it. That's why science fiction fans are dismissed as geeks and nerds.

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot