David Brin
If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.Collection: Believe
If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.Collection: Mistake
Science has learned recently that contempt and indignation are addictive mental states. I mean physically and chemically addictive. Literally! People who are self-righteous a lot are apparently doping themselves rhythmically with auto-secreted surges of dopamine, endorphins and enkephalins. Didn't you ever ask yourself why indignation feels so good?Collection: Mean
Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.Collection: Thinking
A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.Collection: Neurosis
In historical fact, all of history's despots, combined, never managed to get things done as well as this rambunctious, self-critical civilization of free and sovereign citizens, who have finally broken free of worshipping a ruling class and begun thinking for themselves. Democracy can seem frustrating and messy at times, but it delivers.Collection: Thinking
Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.Collection: Reality
Life is not fair... Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.Collection: Fool
Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.'Collection: Enlightenment
The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.Collection: Power
I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.Collection: Regret
Indeed, the maligned American pastime of baseball may be by-far the greatest and best sport by one criterion, when it comes to emulating and training for genuinely useful Neolithic skills! Think about it. The game consists of lots of patient waiting and watching (stalking), throwing with incredible accuracy and speed, sprinting, dodging... and hitting moving objects real hard with clubs! And arguing. Hey, what else could you possibly need? Now, tell me, how do soccer or basketball prepare you to survive in the wild, hm?Collection: Basketball
The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some 'norm'), the freedom to learn from experience ... to be influenced by reasonable arguments ... and the appeal to the emotions ... and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.Collection: Essence
Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.Collection: May
...where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge.Collection: Past
Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.Collection: Fiction
The best time to act on this was decades ago. The second best time is now.Collection: Inspirational
If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.Collection: Writing
One of life's joys was to have friends who gave you reality checks...who would call you on your crap before it rose so high you drowned in it.Collection: Reality
Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.Collection: People
Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.Collection: Pie
Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.Collection: Inspirational
My education and background thoroughly inform my writingCollection: Writing
Reciprocal accountability, or criticism [is] the only known antidote to error.Collection: Errors
Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.Collection: Hate
What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?Collection: Popularity
With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world.Collection: Dark
Ideologies are too seductive anyway. It does a man good to see things from a different point of view.Collection: Men
The village is coming back, like it or not.Collection: Community
In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it's not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.Collection: Fighting
It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.Collection: Creativity
Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.Collection: School
Many people have tried to define science fiction. I like to call it the literature of exploration and change. While other genres obsess upon so-called eternal verities, SF deals with the possibility that our children may have different problems. They may, indeed, be different than we have been.Collection: Children
It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.Collection: Past
If there are still honest-smart men and women within those old and noble traditions, they should think carefully, observe and diagnose the illness. They should face the contradiction. Discuss the conflation. And then do as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and many others have done. Choose the miracle of creative competition over an idolatry of cash. They should stand up.Collection: Smart
Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the Universe to make sense!Collection: Asking
Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this... say so!Collection: Civilization
Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.Collection: Smart
Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.Collection: Sarcastic
Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.Collection: Character
Change is the very fabric of our time.Collection: Fabric
Beware of self-indulgence. The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; that ego is paramount over skill; that one can rise to a level from which one can tell the reader to go to hell. These myths, if believed, can ruin you. If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.Collection: Believe
History and geology show what an eyeblink it's been since our current, comfortable culture came about. And yet that culture is using up absolutely everything at a ferocious rate.Collection: Culture
The three basic material rights -- continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness.Collection: Pursuit Of Happiness
Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy... in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of NatureCollection: Sexy
One of the rules I try to follow is that normal people are going to be involved even in heroic eventsCollection: People
I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploringCollection: Writing
Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those casesCollection: Wall
Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work fromCollection: Diverse