Top 200 Liu Cixin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.”

— Liu Cixin

2. “Make time for life, or life won’t make time.”

— Liu Cixin

3. “The whole universe is in darkness, but we remain lit. We’re a tiny bird tied to a branch in the dark forest, with a spotlight trained on on us.”

— Liu Cixin

4. “Fate lies within the light cone.”

— Liu Cixin

5. “Mere existence is already the result of incredible luck. Such was the case on Earth in the past, and such has always been the case in this cruel universe. But at some point, humanity began to develop the illusion that they’re entitled to life, that life can be taken for granted.”

— Liu Cixin

6. “You must know that a person’s ability to discern the truth is directly proportional to his knowledge.”

— Liu Cixin

7. “Hide yourself well; cleanse well.”

— Liu Cixin

8. “It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?”

— Liu Cixin

9. “It’s easy to make ideological mistakes in theory.”

— Liu Cixin

10. “People finally realized that if God truly existed, he was a real bastard.”

— Liu Cixin

11. “Life shouldn’t be a lifetime of waiting.”

— Liu Cixin

12. “The Earth is a cosmic soap bubble. One pop, and it’s gone.”

— Liu Cixin

13. “The universe is grand, but life is grander. We’re certain to meet again.”

— Liu Cixin

14. “Make time for civilization, for civilization won’t make time.”

— Liu Cixin

15. “Of course she’s not afraid. She knows that the sun will rise again tomorrow.”

— Liu Cixin

16. “In the face of madness, rationality was powerless.”

— Liu Cixin

17. “The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers. Memory was a river that had run dry long ago, leaving only scattered gravel in a lifeless riverbed.”

— Liu Cixin

18. “Let’s turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on Earth and build up the trust and understanding between the different peoples and civilizations that make up humanity. But for the universe outside the solar system, we should be ever vigilant...”

— Liu Cixin

19. “A civilization that cannot see the sun and stars will be without religion. There.”

— Liu Cixin

20. “But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be civilizations bound by universal, noble, moral constraints, as if cherishing and loving different forms of life are parts of a self-evident universal code of conduct.”

— Liu Cixin

21. “Do you think life is nothing but a fragile, thin, soft shell clinging to the surface of this planet?” “Isn’t it?” “Only if you neglect the power of time. If a colony of ants continue to move clods the size of grains of rice, they could remove all of Mount Tai in a billion years. As long as you give it enough time, life is stronger than metal and stone, more powerful than typhoons and volcanoes.”

— Liu Cixin

22. “The entire empire has sunk into a quagmire of extravagance from which they cannot extricate themselves.”

— Liu Cixin

23. “We’re going to advance! Advance! We’ll stop at nothing to advance!”

— Liu Cixin

24. “Growing up, his father had used silence rather than speech to educate him, and words were merely the punctuation between the silences.”

— Liu Cixin

25. “What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding; everything else comes second.”

— Liu Cixin

26. “Indeed, it is the nature of intelligent life to climb mountains, to strive to stand on ever higher ground to gaze farther into the distance. It is a drive completely divorced from the demands of survival.”

— Liu Cixin

27. “Successful cooperation does not equate to successful understanding.”

— Liu Cixin

28. “There are no permanent enemies or comrades, only permanent duty.”

— Liu Cixin

29. “To love humanity, you must start by loving individual persons, by fulfilling your responsibility to those you love.”

— Liu Cixin

30. “From a physics perspective, the form of matter movement known as life has no more meaning than any other movement of matter. You can’t find any new physical laws in life, so from my standpoint, the death of a person and the melting of an ice cube are essentially the same thing. Dr. Chen, you tend to overthink things. You should learn to look at life from the perspective of the ultimate law of the universe. You’ll feel much better if you do.”

— Liu Cixin

31. “Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind.”

— Liu Cixin

32. “The past was like a handful of sand you thought you were squeezing tightly, but which had already run out through the cracks between your fingers.”

— Liu Cixin

33. “Science fiction is a literature of possibilities.”

— Liu Cixin

34. “When the Earth, an artificial satellite, and the sun are in a straight line, the line of sight from the ground-based antenna to the satellite will have the sun as its background. The sun is a giant source of electromagnetic radiation, and, as a result, satellite transmissions to the ground will be overwhelmed by interference from the solar radiation. This problem could not be completely solved, even in the twenty-first century.”

— Liu Cixin

35. “This was the theory of “contact as symbol” proposed by sociologist Bill Mathers of RAND Corporation in his book, The 100,000-Light-Year Iron Curtain: SETI Sociology. Mathers believed that contact with an alien civilization is only a symbol or a switch. Regardless of the content of the encounter, the results would be the same.”

— Liu Cixin

36. “If I destroy you, what business is it of yours?”

— Liu Cixin

37. “I need a dual-vector foil for cleansing.”

— Liu Cixin

38. “The abbot shook his head and said, “No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”

— Liu Cixin

39. “Death is the only lighthouse that is always lit. No matter where you sail, ultimately, you must turn toward it. Everything fades in the world, but Death endures.”

— Liu Cixin

40. “If we lose our human nature, we lose much, but if we lose our bestial nature, we lose everything.”

— Liu Cixin

41. “Staying alive is not enough to guarantee survival. Development is the best way to ensure survival.”

— Liu Cixin

42. “In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong.”

— Liu Cixin

43. “But burning was their fate; they were the generation meant to be consumed by fire.”

— Liu Cixin

44. “But I cannot escape and leave behind reality, just like I cannot leave behind my shadow. Reality brands each of us with its indelible mark. Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.”

— Liu Cixin

45. “Once we know where we are, then the world becomes as narrow as a map. When we don’t know, the world feels unlimited.”

— Liu Cixin

46. “Although the method is simple, it shows how, mathematically, random brute force can overcome precise logic. It’s a numerical approach that uses quantity to derive quality.”

— Liu Cixin

47. “And now we know that this is the journey that must be made by every civilization: awakening inside a cramped cradle, toddling out of it, taking flight, flying faster and farther, and, finally, merging with the fate of the universe as one. The ultimate fate of all intelligent beings has always been to become as grand as their thoughts.”

— Liu Cixin

48. “The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical:.”

— Liu Cixin

49. “But one always awoke from a dream, just like the sun – which, though it would rise again, brought no fresh hope.”

— Liu Cixin

50. “Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it. There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years.”

— Liu Cixin