Top 100 Peter F. Hamilton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Computers aren’t smart, just fast. Garbage in, garbage out.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

2. “You cannot fight entropy.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

3. “Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong in order to do what’s right.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

4. “Genuine scientific progress is a slow climb, which requires a stable society to support thinkers and theorists over many generations.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

5. “Consciousness is just a window into time.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

6. “The military do so love shiny new technology, there’s always so many ways to abuse it.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

7. “Wherever you find human misery, you find lawyers, either causing it or making a profit from it.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

8. “I believe that intelligence and rationality will always be primary no matter what shape sentient creatures take. To not think that would be to doubt the value of life itself.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

9. “How you humans survive so much experience is something I shall never understand. To do so much and react to it all in the way you do is as much a curse as a blessing. You never take time to digest and appreciate what happens to you.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

10. “This must be the sixth realm, the nameless void. Entropy is the only lord here. We will all bow down before him in the end.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

11. “Ideology is a sick-soul-meme; it gnaws basic decency away until you can self-justify the most extreme acts as worthwhile to further the cause. Any cause.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

12. “You are so much smarter than me, aren’t you?” “No. I just think things through quicker, that’s all.” “If that’s not a definition of smart, I don’t know what is.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

13. “You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

14. “It is the epitome of entropy, the final enemy of all things.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

15. “Yet, in the end, entropy will always emerge victorious, snuffing out the very last glimmer of heat and light. After that there is only darkness. When that state is reached even eternity will cease to exist, for one moment will be like every other and nothingness will claim the universe.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

16. “But to have dreamed the dream is to have flown above the mountains so high in all but deed.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

17. “This universe and all it is connected with will come to an end. Entropy carries us towards the inevitable omega point, that is why entropy exists.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

18. “In any decent civilization, healthcare is a right, not a privilege.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

19. “Pick a gender and stick with it, guys.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

20. “I grew up on a farm,” Ayanna protested. “We worked the land.” She pulled a face. “Well, I helped Dad program the agribots.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

21. “Three hundred and twenty-eight wormholes were opened in unison. They were small, all of them measuring a metre and a half wide. Just enough for a ten-megatonne warhead to pass through. The wormholes closed.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

22. “Chain of command was always a nominal concept in the division, you trusted people to do their job right.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

23. “During the Trinity test of the very first atom bomb, Fermi wondered if the detonation would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. They just didn’t know, you see. We think the quantum disruption won’t propagate. If it does, then the whole universe gets converted into energy.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

24. “Out of twinkling stardust all came, into dark matter all will fall. Death mocks us as we laugh defiance at entropy, yet ignorance birthed mortals sail forth upon time’s cruel sea.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

25. “Let’s see how long the rich can eat their money for.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

26. “So how big an interest have you been taking in the Pilgrimage?’ ‘Big. That idiot Ethan really could trigger the end of the galaxy. I’d have to move.’ ‘How terrible.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

27. “The universe was not built on integrity. In the face of weakness, force can and will triumph. All you can do is choose who wields that force. Us or the Starflyer.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

28. “With a degree of privacy assured, I squatted down and crapped out the biopackage I’d brought along. The human anal cavity has traditionally been a smuggler favorite for most of our existence on Earth. It made me really proud to carry that fine institution on into the starflight era. Yeah, right.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

29. “Humans can do anything if they have enough determination. And knowledge. Knowledge is the key to everything.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

30. “You convinced yourselves we’re just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser’s way out. Your way.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

31. “True life is the understanding and support of other people, of selflessness, of charity, of kindness.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

32. “The ubiquitous semi-sentient utility routine running in her macrocellular clusters responded immediately by unfolding a basic array of mental icons, slender lines of blue fairy light that superimposed themselves within her wobbly vision. She frowned. If she was reading their efficiency modes correctly, her biononics had.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

33. “He never did understand why people admired or even collected art. The greatest human artist could never hope to match what nature did with a single flower.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

34. “Is Vermillion damaged?’ ‘No.’ He gave her an anxious grin. ‘Not exactly. Just lost.’ ‘Lost?’ It was possibly an even more worrying answer. How could you get lost flying to a star cluster that measured twenty thousand lightyears in diameter? It wasn’t as if you could lose sight of something of that magnitude. ‘That’s ridiculous.’ ‘The captain will explain. Let’s get you to the bridge.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

35. “They would have thought me mad, even Kristabel. Flying carriages. People who live forever. Hundreds of inhabited worlds. Machine servants instead of genistars. Cities where Makkathran would be naught but a small district. A civilization where justice was available to all. Aliens. More stars in the sky than it is possible to count. No, such marvels of my fevered imagination were best kept inside my skull.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

36. “The Silverbird was tracking the Raiel’s gas giant-sized DF spheres as they continued their flight across the star system. Gravity waves spilled out from them with astonishing force, distorting the orbits within the main asteroid rings. A couple of small moons caught in the backwash had also changed inclination. All nine of the DFs were heading in towards the small orange star which Centurion Station’s never-named planet was in orbit around. As the ship watched, the photosphere started to dim.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

37. “The penalty for a long life is increasing resistance to change.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

38. “Lawyers had abolished the simple concept of right and wrong, turning it into degrees of guilt.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

39. “Perfection,” Inigo said, “is what we strive for; it is never what we should achieve. There is no such thing as utopia. Life by its nature is a struggle. Take that away and you take away any reason to exist.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

40. “How they hell does it do that?”

— Peter F. Hamilton

41. “Hindsight must surely be the most useless function of the human brain, torturing yourself over the unalterable past.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

42. “So government did what government always does when confronted with an opposition which can’t be brought down by fair and legal means. It cheated.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

43. “Once you’ve achieved everything, there is nothing left. You take out the core of being human: the striving.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

44. “This desperate act was inevitable. This act is a direct result of the oppression, both political and economic, imposed by our government. You crush hope. Yes, you! You destroy opportunity. You eradicate dignity. You do all that so you may maintain your filthy bigoted anti-democratic society. You leave the rest of us no choice. We are not allowed to protest.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

45. “Formal address wrongness. Much sorriness. Greetings ritual observance.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

46. “We’re on Earth, now, remember. You can do anything you want here as long as you’ve got money.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

47. “The human race, for all our facets and our institutional stupidity, is something I believe in. I admire our diversity, our stubbornness. The dynamic of conflict is one of our greatest traits.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

48. “Laura Brandt knew all about coming out of a suspension chamber.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

49. “Forty-two.” “Excuse me?” I queried. “Old joke,” the cardinal admitted. “The number of angels that can actually dance on a pinhead.”

— Peter F. Hamilton

50. “I don’t get it. There’s nothing here. Send your invasion force halfway across the galaxy so they can build a five star ski resort? That’s crazy.”

— Peter F. Hamilton