Top 60 Greg Bear Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings – stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.”

— Greg Bear

2. “Of all the planets apart from Earth in our solar system, Mars is the most hospitable. Yeah. Right. Better keep my visit short. And yet, despite the discomfort, the danger, I love it here. I love coming back for these imaginary vacations. The sights are amazing.”

— Greg Bear

3. “In the society of would-be-gods, a humble man is always polite.”

— Greg Bear

4. “Science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.”

— Greg Bear

5. “It is the bullet you don’t hear that gets you.”

— Greg Bear

6. “We’ve been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that’s why. Planetisms that don’t know enough to keep quiet, get eaten.”

— Greg Bear

7. “All things will be ambiguous, for this is the curse of wisdom.”

— Greg Bear

8. “When all hopes are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.”

— Greg Bear

9. “Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches.”

— Greg Bear

10. “Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization...”

— Greg Bear

11. “According to legend, Path Kethona was first visited by Forerunners during our greatest period of exploration, over ten million years ago. Yet there was substantial doubt that voyage had ever happened. Records had long ago vanished. Not even Haruspis, entrusted with studying the Domain, could access those memories.”

— Greg Bear

12. “Robert’s problem was familiar to Aquinas. He called it ignorantia affectata, cultivated ignorance.”

— Greg Bear

13. “From horizon to horizon the sky was filled with stars to within a few degrees of a fresh sliver of moon, a tiny thing lost in the yawn of night.”

— Greg Bear

14. “There once was an infant lost in the woods, crying its heart out, wondering why no one answered, drawing down the wolves.”

— Greg Bear

15. “Desert and Death Valley were the Mecca and Al Medina.”

— Greg Bear

16. “Man is the poet who kills, Woman the angel who eats.”

— Greg Bear

17. “It’s out there,” Bitterness says. “Your monster. Mendicant Bias. Can’t you feel it?”

— Greg Bear

18. “Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.”

— Greg Bear

19. “Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.”

— Greg Bear

20. “The price of freedom – of individuality – is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.”

— Greg Bear

21. “Dogs could mellow a wild boy, or open up a shy one.”

— Greg Bear

22. “To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat.”

— Greg Bear

23. “Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.”

— Greg Bear

24. “Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?”

— Greg Bear

25. “The asteroid was longer on the inside than it was on the outside. The seventh chamber went on forever.”

— Greg Bear

26. “There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds.”

— Greg Bear

27. “I sometimes think we deserve to die, we’re all so goddamned stupid.”

— Greg Bear

28. “We fought and argued and loved and learned through the long, cold voyage. We chose teams, disbanded, re-formed, chose again, and now the fit is perfection within diversity.”

— Greg Bear

29. “Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn’t been for many decades... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.”

— Greg Bear

30. “There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.”

— Greg Bear

31. “It’s been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!”

— Greg Bear

32. “It is no crime. I once felt affection for a Warrior-Servant as I hunted his ships and destroyed his fighters. No lover ever felt my attentions so fiercely.”

— Greg Bear

33. “Having one’s eyes opened doesn’t make one grateful.”

— Greg Bear

34. “So this additional indignity will be inflicted upon you. It means, I believe, that humans will not end here, but may rise again – fight again. Humans are always warriors.”

— Greg Bear

35. “It was when a society became most distressed and antiquated that it would recreate an overwhelming fantasy of some Golden Age, a time when all was great and glorious, when people were more noble and causes more magnificent and honorable.”

— Greg Bear

36. “I begin to rant. I’m special, I have needs, I have a job to do – once I get my act together. I’m going to be important.”

— Greg Bear

37. “It’s kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It’s about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.”

— Greg Bear

38. “Didn’t anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people – perhaps many people – to death, grief, torment?”

— Greg Bear

39. “He had had a dream he couldn’t remember clearly now. His mind shuffled palm leaves over the sand to hide the tracks of the subconscious at play.”

— Greg Bear

40. “Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze.”

— Greg Bear

41. “Stars I understand. They shed light and give life. It is the emptiness between that haunts me.”

— Greg Bear

42. “Once again, human history proved that the worst mistake possible in politics was underestimating one’s opponents. Van.”

— Greg Bear

43. “But to fight something, you really have to try to understand its motivations – particularly when the something you’re fighting holds most of the cards, the deck is stacked against you, and the whole gambling hall is on fire and filled with thugs.”

— Greg Bear

44. “The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false.”

— Greg Bear

45. “ERVs are useful during viviparous development. They help us subdue our mothers’ immune systems. Otherwise, her lymphocytes would kill the embryos, because in part they type for the father’s tissue.”

— Greg Bear

46. “Sometimes the problem outshines the pain.”

— Greg Bear

47. “Can’t own a woman, Mike. Wonderful companions, can’t own them.” “I know.”

— Greg Bear

48. “Explain it to me. God says he loves me but dumps me into a world of pain. You, so full of hate, so ignorant, he leaves alone. Self-righteous bigots he doesn’t even touch. Explain that to me!”

— Greg Bear

49. “Oh, there will still be deception. The fresh crew will emerge as adults, will have memories of past training and lives. Our stories, our lives, will go on. I refuse to allow that love to die, just because it was never real.”

— Greg Bear

50. “To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot.”

— Greg Bear