Poul Anderson

“The great object is to find a path to a better future, but we are not going to do that if we are always looking at the road signs. We have to look ahead.”

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

“Call it a hunch; and a hunch is the product of a million subconscious observations.”

“History is not a toboggan slide, but a road to be reconsidered and even re-chosen.”

“A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.”

“There is no such thing as a completely objective person, but people who are aware of their own subjectivity are less likely to be deluded.”

“Any real state, any real sovereign, has a monopoly on violence. That’s what defines a state.”

“No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.”