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Book: Green Mars
Quotes of Book: Green Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. … And because we are alive, the universe must be said to be alive. We are its consciousness as well as our own. We rise out of the cosmos and we see its mesh of patterns, and it strikes us as beautiful. And that feeling is the most important thing in all the universe-its culmination, like the color of a flower at first bloom on a wet morning. It's a holy feeling, and our task in this world is to do everything we can to foster it.
book-quote life nature patterns
Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
Survival of the fittest," which Sax had always considered a useless tautology. But if social Darwinists were taking over, then maybe the concept gained importance, as a religious dogma of the ruling order....
book-quote survival-of-the-fittest social-darwinism
Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
Revolution meant shattering one structure and creating another one, but shattering was easier than creating, and so the two parts of the act were not necessarily fated to be equally successful. In that sense, building a revolution was like building an arch; until both columns were there, and the keystone in place, practically any disruption could bring the whole thing crashing down.
book-quote revolution destroying keystone
Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
Arguments, speculation-- conspiracy theories of all kind. The usual thing, right? No one is ever simply assassinated any more. Ever since your Kennedys, it is always a matter of how many stories you can invent to explain the same body of facts. That is the great pleasure of conspiracy theory--not explanation, but narrative. It is like Scheherazade.
book-quote facts narrative conspiracy-theories
Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
What use was utopia without joy, after all? What was the point of all their striving if it did not include the laughter of the young?
book-quote young youth utopia
Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
Revolution suspends habit as well as law. But just as nature abhors a vacuum, people abhor anarchy.
book-quote revolution law
Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
Why don't you like it when you can't say why?
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Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
If it was 200 Kelvin outside why not say so, rather than talk about witches' tits and the like,
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Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
Hierarchy, you know. And their place in the hierarchy. As long as it's high enough. Everyone bound into their places. It's safer than freedom. And a lot of people are cowards.
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Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
What was personal gain but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And what was power but the freedom to do what you wanted to do? And once you had that freedom, any more wealth or power actually began to restrict one's options, and reduce one's freedom. One became a servant of one's wealth or power, constrained to spend all one's time protecting it.
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Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
It's stupid because it makes the assumption that your enemies are weaker than you, and will do what you want if you murder a few of them. But people aren't like that. I mean, think about how it will fall out. You go down that canyon and kill a bunch of people doing their jobs, and later other people come along and find the bodies. They'll hate you forever. Even if you do take over Mars someday they'll still hate you, and do anything they can to screw things up.
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Kim Stanley Robinson _ Green Mars
With practice one could dodge the past almost entirely.
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