Sheri S. Tepper
304 quotes
Biography
"I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say..."They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision..."They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold..."But, if one says, "History teaches,"then they will not believe."
"To my mind, the expression of divinity is in variety, and the more variable the creation, the more variable the creatures that surround us, botanical and zoological, the more chance we have to learn and to see into life itself, nature itself. If we were just human beings, living in a spaceship, with an algae farm to give us food, we would not be moved to learn nearly as many things as we are moved by living on a world, surrounded by all kinds of variety. And when I see that variety being first decimated, and then halved — and I imagine in another hundred years it may be down by 90% and there'll be only 10% of what we had when I was a child — that makes me very sad, and very despairing, because we need variety. We came from that, we were born from that, it's our world, the world in which we became what we have become."
"The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers. I have always lived in a world in which I'm just a spot in history. My life is not the important point. I'm just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on. I cannot conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that."
"So I learned that people may be kind enough while not caring a rather."
"This led me to the thought that it might be easy to pretend to be a Seer. After all, if one pretended to have visions of the far distant future, how would anyone know if they came true or not?"
"“I tell you, lad, that men will believe if one says, ‘The Gods say…’ They will believe if one says, ‘I had a Vision…’ They will believe if one says, ‘It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold…’ But, if one says, ‘History teaches,’ then they will not believe.”"
"“My son, be schooled by me. If your people taught you when you were a child that there are monsters in the wood, you would have believed them. Then, later, if a woodsman had come and said to you, leading you among the trees, ‘See, there is nothing here but shadow and light, leaf and trunk, bird and beast. See, I show you. Look with your own eyes.’ Though you would look and see nothing, still you would believe there were monsters there. You would believe them invisible, or behind you, or hiding beneath the stones, or within the trees somehow. No matter what the woodsman said, you would believe your fear. Men always believe their fear. Only the strong, the brave, the curious—only they can overcome their fear to peer and poke and pry at life to find what is truly there…”"
"You’ve been too long in the nursery, boy. Too long with lads and dreamers and cooks. Come out, come out wherever you are! The cock crows morning, and the Great Game is toward! Play it or be swept from the board."
"Perhaps, Someday…well. All time is full of somedays."
"Every time I began to take myself seriously, he let me know how small a vegetable I was in his particular stew."
"We of Betand do not change our laws readily, so says my father, but we interpret them to our needs."
"I trusted him as far as I could kick him up a chimney."
"They considered me a treasure beyond price until it came time to listen to me, and then I might as well have been a froglet going oh-ab, oh-ab, oh-ab in the ditches. I would like to have been involved at the center of things, but—well. It would have done no good to talk to Mavin about it. She was a tricksy one, my mother, and though I would have trusted her implicitly with my life, I would not trust her at all with my sanity."
"The knife of conscience twisted, and the serpent of guilt writhed under the knife."
"I reflected that a little taste of power could take a reasonably sensible person and make some kind of groveling, cringing thing of him."
"I often have these good ideas which are as often ignored."
"He told us that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. He told us to seek justice rather than the Game. It was the laws, the rules which made Gaming. It was Gaming made injustice. We can only try something new and hope that it is better."
"There are those who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living."
"You have not reared him to care what others do, or think, or say. How then should he care for education, for is that not the study of what others care about?"
"“Wisdom,” growled the Agirul. “Painful, isn’t it? We assume so much and resist learning to the contrary.”"
"If one may not sleep and one may not act, then what use is there sitting about?"
"“Parasites,” hissed Aunt Six, just loud enough that he could not fail to hear. “No skills of their own, so they must live by preventing others from using common sense.”"
"There is a kind of animal frenzy can be whipped up sometimes among fools and children, often using religion as an excuse for it. When it happens, it is wise to be elsewhere."
"I’ll tell you, nothing is so dangerous as ambition in a man who cares not who stands in his way."
"Mavin shook her head, but withheld any judgment. If there was anything she had learned in long travels here and there, it was that to most people in the world, every unfamiliar thing was considered unacceptably strange."