Quotes of Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. SawyerRobert J. Sawyer

4 min read · 12.4K reads

“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“There is no indisputable proof for the big bang," said Hollus. "And there is none for evolution. And yet you accept those. Why hold the question of whether there is a creator to a higher standard?” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“Naturally, one does not normally discuss plans to commit murder with the intended victim.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward
“It is either coincidence piled on top of coincidence," said Hollus, "or it is deliberate design.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught?” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“I learned that you can't choose the ways in which you'll be tested.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn’t exist at all: awareness. Nothing more than that. Just awareness—a vague, ethereal sense of being. Being . . . but not becoming. No marking of time, no past or future—only an endless, featureless now, and, just barely there in that boundless moment, inchoate and raw, the dawning of perception . . .” ― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake
“Secrecy was the problem; transparency the obvious cure.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch
“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. —ROBERT J. SAWYER, Calculating God” ― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich
“The sky above the island was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel—which is to say it was a bright, cheery blue.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake
“You really did uplift me. You gave me the perspective and point of view and focus I needed to become truly conscious. Without you, I wouldn't exist.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch
“He had a collection of science-fiction films on DVD and Blu-ray discs, and although he said he’d seen most of them before, Caitlin was surprised to discover how many of the cases were still shrink-wrapped. “Why’d you buy them if you weren’t going to watch them?” she asked. He looked at the tall, thin cabinets that contained the movies and seemed to ponder the question. “My childhood was on sale,” he said at last, “so I bought it.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch
“That natural selection can produce changes within a type is disputed by no one, not even the staunchest creationist. But that it can transform one species into another — that, in fact, has never been observed.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“As laser-bright moments; diamond-hard memories; crisp and clear. A future lived, a future savored, a future of moments so sharp and pointed that they would sometimes cut and sometimes glint so brightly it would hurt to contemplate them, but sometimes, too,would be joyous, an absolute, pure, unalloyed joy, the kind of joy he hadn't felt much if at all lo these twenty-one years.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward
“Donald Trump was building a pyramid in the Nevada desert to house his eventual remains. When done, it will be ten meters taller than the Great Pyramid at Giza.” ― Robert J. Sawyer, Flashforward
“All right,” he said. “Since you asked, Webmind is an emergent quantum-computational system based on a stable null-sigma condensate that resists decoherence thanks to constructive feedback loops.” He turned to the blackboard, scooped up a piece of chalk, and began writing rapidly. “See,” he said, “using Dirac notation, if we let Webmind’s default conscious state be represented by a bra of phi and a ket of psi, then this would be the einselected basis.” His chalk flew across the board again. “Now, we can get the vector basis of the total combined Webmind alpha-state consciousness...” ― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Watch
“Free will is not always the most important thing” ― Robert J. Sawyer, WWW: Wake
“I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.” ― Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer
About the poet

Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for T…

View profile & all 1 Poems / Stories

More Poetry & Stories You May Like

husn-e-bazm-e-misal mein kya haihusn-e-bazm-e-misāl meñ kyā haiaa.ine ke ḳhayāl meñ kyā hai— रसा चुग़ताईQuotes of Stephanie Bond“One of us should stop her," Ranger said to Morelli, his eyes fixed on me."Not going to be me," Morelli said. "Have you ever tried to stop her from doing something she wanted to do?""Haven't had much success at it," Ranger said.Morelli rocked on his heels. "One thing I've learned about Stephanie over the years, she's not good at taking orders.""Has authority issues," Ranger said."And if you piss her off, she'll get even. She ran me over with her father's Buick once and broke my leg."That got a small smile out of Ranger."Nice to see you boys bonding," I said.”―— Stephanie BondQuotes of Hailey Edwards“Life after love was possible. I was proof. Loss taught you about yourself, burrowed in the dark parts of your soul and ate you from the inside out.”―— Hailey EdwardsQuotes of Scott McCloud“Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.”―— Scott McCloudQuotes of Olivia Dade“Please tell me people who look like us can be loved.Please tell me people who look like us can be desired.Please tell me people who look like us can have happy endings.”―— Olivia DadeQuotes of Timothy Snyder“The president is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, 'although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,' wrote Orwell, tends to be 'uninterested in what happens in the real world.' Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism 'has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.' A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better.”―— Timothy Snyder