Top 200 Liu Cixin Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Outside the ship, the thin membrane of space-time rippled with the gravitational waves, like a placid lake surface disturbed by a night breeze. The judgment of death for both worlds spread across the cosmos at the speed of light.”

— Liu Cixin

102. “To work in fundamental theory, one must be stupid.”

— Liu Cixin

103. “The fish responsible for drying the sea are not here.”

— Liu Cixin

104. “I want to tell all those who believe in God that I am not the Chosen One. I also want to tell all the atheists that I am not a history-maker. I am but an ordinary person. Unfortunately, I have not been able to walk the ordinary person’s path. My path is, in reality, the journey of a civilization.”

— Liu Cixin

105. “If this was so, then how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil?”

— Liu Cixin

106. “Anything sufficiently weird must be fishy.”

— Liu Cixin

107. “During research conducted with the neuroscientist Keiko Yamasuki, he discovered that brain activity for thoughts and memories operated on the quantum level rather than on the molecular level as previously believed.”

— Liu Cixin

108. “By the time you’re my age, you’ll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”

— Liu Cixin

109. “The universe is a hollow sphere floating in the middle of a sea of fire. There are numerous tiny holes in the surface of the sphere, as well as a large one. The light from the sea of flames shines through these holes. The tiny ones are stars, and the large one is the sun.”

— Liu Cixin

110. “The false alarm was the result of the explosive amplifying effects of a hyper-information society when fed sensitive news.”

— Liu Cixin

111. “We’ll send only a brain,” he said.”

— Liu Cixin

112. “As he spoke, he looked up and once again saw Zhang Beihai’s steady gaze, which revealed a determination that warmed his heart a little. Zhang Beihai, I know you have faith. With a father like that, it would be impossible for you not to. But things are definitely not as simple as you say. I don’t know what you base your faith on, and I don’t even know what else your faith encompasses. Just like your father. I admired him, but I have to admit that in the end I couldn’t figure him out. Chang.”

— Liu Cixin

113. “You are standing at the foot of the mountain. We are all always at the foot. The speed of light is the foot of a mountain; the three dimensions of space are the foot of a mountain. You are imprisoned in the deep gorge of light-speed and three- dimensional space. Does it not feel... cramped?”

— Liu Cixin

114. “I’ve always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these wonderful stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.”

— Liu Cixin

115. “The humanism of Earth will lead many Trisolarans onto the wrong path. Just as Trisolaran civilization has already become a religion on Earth, Earth civilization has this potential on Trisolaris.”

— Liu Cixin

116. “I have a dream that one day brilliant sunlight will illuminate the dark forest.”

— Liu Cixin

117. “In the eternal night of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, two civilization had swept through like two shooting stars, and the universe had remembered their light.”

— Liu Cixin

118. “Earth was treated as a knowledge battery: After it was charged fully with Trisolaran knowledge, it would provide more power.”

— Liu Cixin

119. “Like those proverbial bookish men who could not even tell types of grains apart, they do not labor with their hands, and know nothing practical. They.”

— Liu Cixin

120. “In one remote corner of the vast sea of information on the Internet, there was a remote corner, and in a remote corner of that remote corner, and then in a remote corner of a remote corner of a remote corner of that remote corner – that is, in the very depths of the most remote corner of all – a virtual world came back to life.”

— Liu Cixin

121. “Life reached an evolutionary milestone when it climbed onto land from the ocean, but those first fish that climbed onto land ceased to be fish.”

— Liu Cixin

122. “The child that was human civilization had opened the door to her home and glanced outside. The endless night terrified her so much that she shuddered against the expansive and profound darkness, and shut the door firmly.”

— Liu Cixin

123. “Human civilization now possessed a mirror in the universe, through which humanity gained a new understanding of itself through a novel perspective.”

— Liu Cixin

124. “Earth civilization had a way to transmit at the level of a Kardashev Type II civilization.”

— Liu Cixin

125. “The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the big bang.”

— Liu Cixin

126. “Fundamentally, Tianming was not suited to live in society, nor out of it. He lacked the ability to thrive in society, but also the resources to ignore it. All he could do was hang on to the edge, suffering. He had no idea where he was headed in life.”

— Liu Cixin

127. “It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race. This thought determined the entire direction of Ye’s life.”

— Liu Cixin

128. “Why are you all like this?” Evans suddenly became furious. “Why does one have to save people to be considered a hero? Why is saving other species considered insignificant? Who gave humans such high honors? No, humans do not need saving. They’re already living much better than they deserve.”

— Liu Cixin

129. “Perhaps the outside world really was something akin to a quantum state, and did not exist unless he observed it.”

— Liu Cixin

130. “Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind. It portrays events of interest to all of humanity, and thus science fiction should be the literary genre most accessible to readers of different nations. Science fiction often describes a day when humanity will form a harmonious whole, and I believe the arrival of such a day need not wait for the appearance of extraterrestrials.”

— Liu Cixin

131. “The assembly fell into a prolonged silence. Ahead of them stretched the leaden road of time, terminating somewhere in the mists of the future, where all they could see were flickering flames and luster of blood. The brevity of a human lifespan tormented them as never before, and their hearts soared above the vault of time to join with their descendants and plunge into blood and fire in the icy cold of space, the eventual meeting place for the souls of all soldiers.”

— Liu Cixin

132. “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. He had lived life always looking out for the next thing, and whenever he had gained, he had also lost, leaving him with little in the end.”

— Liu Cixin

133. “When they passed a maintenance site in the road bed, Einstein stopped next to a worker who was smashing stones and silently observed this boy with torn clothes and dirty face and hands. He asked your father how much the boy earned each day. After asking the boy, he told Einstein: five cents.”

— Liu Cixin

134. “Germany, your shroud’s on our loom; and in it we weave the threefold doom... We weave; we weave.”

— Liu Cixin

135. “The biggest barrier to reanimating a flash-frozen body is preventing cell damage from ice crystals during the process. It’s like what happens to frozen tofu: When you defrost it, it turns into a sponge. Oh, I guess most of you haven’t head frozen tofu.′ The expert, who was Chinese, smiled at the confused Western faces around him.”

— Liu Cixin

136. “He stood on the ice, his teeth chattering in the cold, a cold that seemed to come not from the lake water or icy wind, but from a direct transmission from outer space.”

— Liu Cixin

137. “The ETO concluded that the common people did not seem to have the comprehensive and deep understanding of the highly educated about the dark side of humanity.”

— Liu Cixin

138. “English, formerly the most widely used language, and Chinese, spoken by the largest population, had blended with each other without distinction to become the world’s most powerful language. Luo Ji learned later that the other languages of the world were undergoing the same fusion.”

— Liu Cixin

139. “The explosive development of technology was analogous to the grown of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body. He advocated abolishing crude technologies such as fossil fuels and nuclear energy and keeping gentler technologies such as solar power and small-scale hydroelectric power.”

— Liu Cixin

140. “The fate of the entire human race was now tied to these slender fingers. Without hesitation, Ye pressed the button.”

— Liu Cixin

141. “I like twilight better.” “Why?” “When twilight fades, you can see the stars. When dawn fades, all that’s left is... ” “All that’s left is the harsh light of reality.”

— Liu Cixin

142. “The key to a wonderful life is a fascination with something.”

— Liu Cixin

143. “But for this mass struggle session, the victims were the reactionary bourgeois academic authorities. These were the enemies of every faction, and they had no choice but to endure cruel attacks from every side.”

— Liu Cixin

144. “Lao Yang told him that sixty, like sixteen, was the best time in life, an age where the burdens of one’s forties and fifties had been laid down, but the slowdown and illness of the seventies and eighties had not yet arrived.”

— Liu Cixin

145. “If even an extremely simple arrangement like the three-body system is unpredictable chaos, how can we have any faith in discovering the laws of the complicated universe?”

— Liu Cixin

146. “The most surprising aspect of the Earth-Trisolaris Movement was that so many people had abandoned all hope in human civilization, hated and were willing to betray their own species, and even cherished as their highest ideal the elimination of the entire human race, including themselves and their children.”

— Liu Cixin

147. “Imagine a windowless, iron room. Many people lie asleep inside. They will soon suffocate and die in their sleep. You shout, and a few hopeless sleepers awaken to a wretched fate that you are powerless to prevent. Have you done them a favor? Unless you wake them up, what hope do they have of escape?”

— Liu Cixin

148. “A new technology can transform society, but when the technology is in its infancy, very few people can see its full potential. For.”

— Liu Cixin

149. “No banquet was eternal. Everything had an end. Everything.”

— Liu Cixin

150. “This is the difference between an ordinary scribe and a literary writer. The highest level of literary creation is when the characters in a novel possess life in the mind of the writer. The writer is unable to control them, and might not even be able to predict the next action they will take. We can only follow them in wonder to observe and record the minute details of their lives like a voyeur.”

— Liu Cixin