Top 10 David Brin Quotes at QuotationFun

Displaying Top 10 David Brin quotes

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This is not about classic left-vs-right anymore. As if that metaphor ever held cogent meaning. Not when every measure of national health that conservatives ought to care about - from budget balancing to small business startups, to military readiness, to States' Rights, to the economy, to individual liberty, to control over immigration at our borders — does vastly and demonstrably better under democrats. With nearly 100% perfection. Fact avoidance is even worse when you encompass ALL of history. Ask today's conservatives which force destroyed more freedom and nearly every competitive market, across 5,000 years. Which foe of liberty and enterprise did Adam Smith despise? Hint: it wasn't "socialism" or "government bureaucrats." No. Given their lack of any other tangible accomplishments across the last fifteen years, one must to conclude that the core agenda of Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch and their petroprince backers really is quite simple. To find out just how far they can push "culture war" toward a repeat of 1861.

"A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war..." at Contrary Brin - 4 October 2009

Where there is mind, there is always solution,” Keneenk taught. All problems contained the elements of their answer.

Startide Rising - 1983, reprinted 1988

There was one exception to the rule that all our foes have committed the Decadence Assumption. Ho Chi Minh never underestimated America. His avowed hero was George Washington and he remained in awe of the U.S., all his life. He remains the only enemy leader who ever defeated us at war, and then only because our hubris, not decadence, got the better of us.

"A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war..." at Contrary Brin - 4 October 2009

I've long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation - even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right. At least, some of them had the beneficial knack of targeting and criticizing the worst liberal mistakes, and often forcing needful re-drafting. That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim - to negotiate better solutions for the republic. Alas, today's Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn't just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun-up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine. Heck, even though "culture war" is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn't what boggles most. It's the stupidity. The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism, a transformation of nearly all of the salient traits of Barry Goldwater from: prudence to recklessness accountability to secrecy fiscal discretion to spendthrift profligacy consistency to hypocrisy civility to nastiness international restraint to recklessness...

"A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war..." at Contrary Brin - 4 October 2009

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.

Interview de David Brin - ActuSF.com - March 2008

What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?

Startide Rising - 1983, reprinted 1988

It's said that "power corrupts," but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.

The Postman - 1997

Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.

The Transparent Society - 1998

One more piece for the Great Jigsaw puzzle. I find it truly stunning how many people can shrug off stuff like this, preferring instead a tiny, cramped cosmos just 6,000 years old, scheduled to end any-time-now in a scripted stage show of unfathomable violence and cruelty. An ancient and immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a majestic Creator. Our brains, capable of exploring His universe, picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much greater tasks than cowering in a small groups of the elect, praying that some of our neighbors will go to perdition...

Commenting on the discovery of Homo floresiensis, in a posting at McMedia.com - 27 October 2004; an unsourced paraphrase replaces "go to perdition" with "go to hell".

The Union will awaken. It always has. We always will.

"A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war..." at Contrary Brin - 4 October 2009

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