269 Quotes by Kim Stanley Robinson

The good that [Galileo] fought for is not so easy to express. But put it this way: he believed in reality. He believed in paying attention to it, and in learning what he could of it, and then saying what he had learned, even insisting on it. Then in trying to apply that knowledge to make things better, if he could. Put it this way: he believed in science.

What's the monetary value of human civilization? Trying to answer that question proves you are a moral and practical idiot.

History is humankind trying to get a grip. Obviously its not easy. But it could go better if you would pay a little more attention to certain details, like for instance your planet.

Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.

Bold didn’t know what he felt, it changed minute by minute.

Historical explanation is not just a matter of the practice of historians, but of the nature of reality. And in reality, physical events are constrained by general laws — or if they are not laws, they are at least extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the links between an event and those that follow it, allowing predictions that, if not deterministically exact, are still accurate enough to give us enormous power over physical reality.

Live for the future. A cosmic history read out of signs so subtle and mathematical that only the effort of a huge transtemporal group of powerful minds could ever have teased it out; but then those who came later could be given the whole story, with its unexplored edges there to take off into.

Every day of the war, about 7,000 men along that front were killed or wounded.

at the end of every month or two . . ., the British had a whole Vietnam Memorial's worth of dead. Every month or two, for 51 months.