Poul Anderson Quotes

#1. Poul Anderson's 'The High Crusade' may have had a greater impact on my development as a writer than any other book I ever read.

Eric Flint

#2. My first published novel was 'Mother of Demons,' which is simply 'The High Crusade' standing on its head. Poul Anderson placed his medieval human heroes in a futuristic alien setting; I placed my futuristic human heroes in a bronze age alien setting.

Eric Flint

#3. The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

Poul Anderson

#4. Better a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.

Poul Anderson

#5. I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.
-Poul_Anderson

Poul Anderson

#6. Why do most people think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe?

Poul Anderson

#7. Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell.

Poul Anderson

#8. I'll have to jump around like sodium in the rain.

Poul Anderson

#9. You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen.

Poul Anderson

#10. I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on ... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.

Poul Anderson

#11. We can't go on ... having regular bowel movements ... while creation happens!

Poul Anderson

#12. A fanatic's willingness to kill or be killed in the service of a cause cannot prove the rightness of that cause.

Poul Anderson

#13. In Harvest of Stars, there is this notion, not original with me of course, that it will become possible to download at least the basic aspects of a human personality into a machine program.

Poul Anderson

#14. for a moment infinitesimal and infinite, men, women, child, ship, and death were one. It

Poul Anderson

#15. Give fear no hold on you. Keep sinews loose and senses open, ready at every instant to flow with the rush of action.

Poul Anderson

#16. Momentarily a wing of zodiacal radiance could be seen, like a halo over the rising fire-disk.

Poul Anderson

#17. I've yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way didn't become still more complicated.

Poul Anderson

#18. Their flight was not less exhilarating for being explainable.

Poul Anderson

#19. Poor old G.K.C.! It's too bad he didn't live to see the change. What paradoxes he would have dreamed up!

Poul Anderson

#20. Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.

Poul Anderson

#21. We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?

Poul Anderson

#22. I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated.

Poul Anderson

#23. The fish that first ventured ashore had considerable practical problems.

Poul Anderson

#24. Timidity can be as dangerous as rashness.

Poul Anderson

#25. That,' he confessed aloud, 'was as ludicrous a case of mutual ineptitude as the gods of slapstick ever engineered. We both deserve to be tickled to death by small green centipedes. Well ... if you keep quiet about it, I will.

Poul Anderson

#26. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right.

Poul Anderson

#27. At each stage ... entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one.

Poul Anderson

#28. Magic!' cried an old man. 'Tis sorcery, and we are undone!' 'Not so,' I told him, 'Sorcery cannot harm good Christians.' 'But I am a miserable sinner,' he wailed.

Poul Anderson

#29. I am told that our chroniclers' practice of inventing speeches for great persons whose lives they write is unscholarly.

Poul Anderson

#30. If nothing else, we today need a reminder that we must never take civilization for granted. I

Poul Anderson

#31. A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die.

Poul Anderson

#32. A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.

Poul Anderson

#33. What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well ... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for.

Poul Anderson

#34. There are some ideas so stupid that only intellectuals can believe in them, particularly left-wing intellectuals.

Poul Anderson

#35. Machines can only find what ignorant men have programmed them to find.

Poul Anderson

#36. The same fight was being waged, here the Nazis and there the Middle World; but in both places, Chaos against Law, something old and wild and blind at war with man and the works of man.

Poul Anderson

#37. Anybody can find infinite Mandelbrot figures in his navel.

Poul Anderson

#38. My knowledge of the human psyche is as yet imperfect. Certain areas won't yield to computation.

Poul Anderson

#39. So softly you hear it now, Mary O'Meara, but soon it comes joyful and clear.
And soon in the shadow and dew of your hilltop a star-guided footfall rings near.
My only beloved, I'm here.

Poul Anderson

#40. Will none wipe the sneer of the face of the cosmos?

Poul Anderson

#41. Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery

Poul Anderson

#42. If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.

Poul Anderson

#43. Ninety-nine per cent 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.

Poul Anderson

#44. These lands are not always calm. We may well have more adventures ahead of us. But we shall meet them with high hearts.

Poul Anderson

#45. He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.

Poul Anderson