Aphorisms

In a previous blog I offered a review of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future: A Novel. Peppered throughout Robinson’s story are hundreds of aphorisms which have me pause for cause (or cause me to pause), to take notice, and reflect. I find these words to be variously powerful, insightful, pithy, analytical, emotional, witty, profound, spiritual, ironic, humorous, practical, instructive, truthful, relevant, poetic, oxymoronic, tenacious, shocking . . . You get my drift.

Many are phrases I wish I had thought of first. Really, however, who cares who spoke them first. I am so glad Robinson shares them with us readers. Once more, I share them below, free of any context, now released to our own imagination and for our playful use. Enjoy. Please comment, and reply with your favourite few. Of add your own.

Life itself was just a long series of trigger events.

It’s not easy to stay unafraid.

Hurt people hurt people.

Right now we’re losing. It’s a fight. That’s for sure.

You work for the seven generations.

Efficiency can become a bad thing for humans.

Strategy comes from below and tactics from above, not the reverse.

A movement without leaders is a good idea in theory, but at some point you have to have a plan.

Happiness is overrated. Is anyone ever really happy?

People need something bigger than themselves.

The truth is that solar power from space is not likely to work very well.

Over and again it was a case of too little too late.

Narcissism is generally regarded as the result of a stunted imagination, and a form of fear.

No one would leave home if they didn’t have to.

The war on terror? It lost.

Either everyone’s happy or no one is safe. But we’re never happy. So we’ll never be safe.

War . . . was mutual assured destruction.

Words are gossamer in a world of granite.

Media events can be good. The trick is to handle them right. Which of course includes not getting killed.

Go right at what bothers you, face up to it.

Honor among thieves is kind of a feudal notion.

We all fuck up until we get lucky, if we do.

It’s a man thing, most of the time. Although I’ve met women who feel just as entitled.

Stupid smartphones.

Everybody cries.

Narcissists could not look in the mirror, the myth had it backwards.

Our tools are expressions of our intentions.

Reality was so much bigger than the self, that it was alarming to contemplate.

The narcissism of small differences.

Slept the sleep of the blessed.

Be as bold as you can dare to be!

Who can tell the riddle of their own true self?

We never really come to the end.

Everyone has to do what they can in their time.

A human life. A mayfly thing, a wisp of smoke. Here, then gone.

Imperial self-regard, pretending to be charity.

Lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, fuck it—win.

There is no other world.