Science Fiction Quotes

Science fiction is not prescriptive, it is descriptive.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

~ Frederik Pohl

If we can't write diversity into sci-fi, then what's the point? You don't create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.

~ Jane Espenson

Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.

~ Anthony Burgess

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.

~ Geoff Ryman

Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.

~ Paul Di Filippo

A writer is very much like the captain on a star ship facing the unknown. When you face the blank page and you have no idea where you're going. It can be terrifying, but it can also be the adventure of a lifetime.

~ Michael Piller

As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored.

~ Paul Di Filippo

I've always loved science fiction. I think the smartest writers are science fiction writers dealing with major things.” – Associated Press interview, 12-7-11

~ Walter Mosley

...[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it isn't SF, but to tell them more or less patiently for forty or fifty years that they are wrong to exclude SF and fantasy from literature, and proving my arguments by writing well.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate.

~ Paul Di Filippo

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

~ Paul Di Filippo

Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone 'stole' an idea: no, no, a thousand times no. The point is the volley, and how it's carried, and what statement is made by the answering 'statement.' In other words — if Burroughs initiates a time-gate and says it works randomly, and then Norton has time gates confounded with the Perilous Seat, the Siege Perilous of the Round Table, and locates it in a bar on a rainy night — do you see both the humor and the volley in the tennis match?

~ C.j. Cherryh

Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.

~ Ted Chiang

I am not a fan of the magical quick fix in any fiction, including fantasy, scifi and comic books. Unless Dr. Who is involved, and then only because we get to use the phrase 'Timey-wimey wibbliness' which, I'm sure you'll agree, there are not enough occasions to drop into ordinary adult conversation.

~ Chris Dee

What is more precious: a thousand answers derived from one question? Or, one answer…from a thousand questions?

~ G.f. Smith

We’re moving faster with our science and technology than our morals are evolving, we’re going to have to live in the future we create so it is up to us to become responsible for what we’re creating. It is the only way to avoid the probable catastrophes that will face us and our children on the way. We all have to get on the same page if we’re to unify and a species and survive. I hope ‘The Vision Quest’ will help people set positive intentions for their lives and the world we live in, as well as give them some tools to manifest them

~ Deborah M. Pratt

When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.

~ Frank Herbert

Technos and clerics have much in common. Both take a world that can’t be fully understood and try to explain its fundamental properties. Clerics postulate beliefs that can never be proven; they demand you accept these postulates as your Faith, which will guide your actions and thoughts. It’s a top down way of thinking; start with the big picture and derive rules for living. Fundamental knowledge is static. Even the derived rules rarely change.Technos work from the bottom up. They build a baseline of observations and formulate theories to explain these phenomena. Nothing is sacred; with new observations, theories are discarded or modified to fit the facts.Technos and clerics; how could they not be in conflict?Dan Ronco’s Diary, 2016

~ Dan Ronco

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

~ Frank Herbert

The will of God or the lunacy of man - it seemed to him that you could take your choice, if you wanted a good enough reason for most things. Or, alternatively (and he thought of it as he contemplated the small orderliness of the cabin against the window background of such frantic natural scenery), the will of man and the lunacy of God.

~ James Hilton

Two men who had never seen each other before and would not likely see each other again. But their sincerity and sweetness, their sharing an instant in a fleeting life. It was almost as if a secret had passed between them. Was this some kind of love? I wanted to follow them, to touch them, to tell them of my happiness. I wanted to whisper to them: 'This is it. This is it'.

~ Alan Lightman

The assumption of no God cannot be proven by science. - Scientific FaithUnder the Thelián Sky: Beyond the Great Unknown (c) 2012

~ Frank Olvera

Cities are more than the sum of their infrastructure. They transcend brick and mortar, concrete and steel. They're the vessels into which human knowledge is poured.

~ Rick Yancey

Improving intelligence is possible, but it is more likely to occur if children are given the right experiences at the right ages.

~ Dennis Garlick

May the Code replicate eternal.

~ Amanda Orneck

If you feel like you don't fit into the world you inherited it is because you were born to help create a new one.

~ Ross Caligiuri

To completely understand me you must first accept that I am not you.

~ Ross Caligiuri

My dream is to create something so beautiful that it encourages people to present the best version of themselves to me everywhere I go.

~ Ross Caligiuri

Eternity will not cause our memories to fade, it will force our hearts to accept the past.

~ Ross Caligiuri

To struggle against the weight of sleep as reality eclipses the moon of your dreams is the purest sign of true love.

~ Ross Caligiuri

Cherish your existence, for memories become legacies and life can change in an instant.

~ Ross Caligiuri

Try to think of it as though we are rewriting history––the first time this experience occurred you and I never kissed in this Dream Machine room. But now when we leave here, and open our eyes again near the wall around the center of Constance, that kiss will be included in our memories of the day we first met. We could spend a lifetime recreating this moment here, meanwhile, not a single second of our lives would slip by back in our reality. Time seems to move differently inside of our memories.

~ Ross Caligiuri

As her feet beat the concrete ground beneath them, her chest began to ache. It had been a long time since she had run at a full sprint. She was, quite literally, running for her life, and leaving everything she had known before behind. Regardless of her past experiences, here she was, blindly following a girl, who was virtually a stranger, because she had promised to lead Eleanor to safety.

~ Ross Caligiuri

Eleanor had heard talk of the rebellion that existed inside the city of Constance before. Most of the information she gathered was considered an old fairy tale by the general public. There were a few stories here and there about people angered by their present living conditions, who had demanded that the center of Constance be held responsible for it. However, information was never passed between the five different sectors. Over the years the tales of the rebellion had become children’s bedtime stories, and people did not take them seriously.

~ Ross Caligiuri

Here we go,” Phoenix said, turning back to Nora. “Try not to let this room scare you.

~ Ross Caligiuri

Every decision you make in life will stem from one of two options: love or fear. Choose love.

~ Ross Caligiuri

Knowing all the languages in the world could help you to really understand all the jokes you can hear... from my future Kids' Funny Business.

~ Ivan Stoikov

Coloron often pondered how a race, in which the stupid seemed more inclined to breed, had managed to come this far, and why human intelligence persisted—a discussion point in the nature vs nurture debate which had not died in half a millennium.

~ Neal Asher

I had aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus unquestionably the all-time cosmic record for poor shots.

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs