Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from The Reality Dysfunction:
“Why don’t Edenists believe, then? Our culture proscribes nothing providing it doesn’t harm the majority.”
“Pomona”
“Thetis”
“Athene and Sinon had help, of course, both human nursery workers and the housechimps, monkey-derived bitek servitors.”
“It was a collective building up of nerve, absolving them of any guilt in advance.”
“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. ”
“The balance is the penalty of being human: the danger of allowing yourself to feel. For this we walk a narrow path high above rocky ground. On one side we have the descent into animalism, on the other a godhead delusion. Both pulling at us, both tempting. But without these forces tugging at your psyche, stirring it into conflict, you can never love. They awaken us, you see, these warring sides, they arouse our passion.”
“Life alone is precious, but conscious thought is the greatest gift the universe offers.”
“He had used drugs and nanonic supplements to compensate at first, then supplements became replacements, with bones exchanged for carbon-fibre struts. Electrical consumption supplanted food intake. The final transition was his skin, replacing the eczema-ridden epidermis with a smooth ochre silicon membrane. Warlow didn’t need a spacesuit to work in the vacuum, he could survive for over three weeks without a power and oxygen recharge. His facial features had become purely cosmetic, a crude mannequin-like caricature of human physiognomy, although there was an inlet valve at the back of his throat for fluid intake. There was no hair, and he certainly didn’t bother with clothes. Sex was something he lost in his fifties.”
“Resolution, the ability and determination to see things through to the end. However unexpected or disappointing that end turns out to be.”
“It took eight generations of cousins marrying to produce you”
“We can look at the whole concept of God and spirituality from a vantage point built on logic and physics. Under such an intensive scientific scrutiny, religion always fails. Our knowledge of quantum cosmology is now sufficiently advanced to eliminate the notion of God altogether. The universe is an entirely natural phenomenon, if extraordinarily complex. It was not created by an external act of will.”
“Kelly was starting to have serious second thoughts about the whole assignment. Like all war correspondents, she supposed. Being on the ground was very different to sitting in the office anticipating being on the ground. Especially with the appearance of that red cloud.”
“weapons science was always kept very close to the government’s chest, receiving the most funds and the least publicity.”
“It is the others you must convince, the ignorant masses, yet paradoxically, they are the ones hardest for you to reach. Theirs are the minds which, thanks to circumstance, have set and hardened against new concepts and ideas from an early age.”
“Funny how different life could be, so many things that make you take one route instead of another. If only we could live them all.”
“Interpretation through the filters of ideology has always been one of our race's curses.”
“As if we didn't have enough weapons already. But that's human nature, we've always got to go one better, to increase the terror another notch.”
“Yuri had milled around watching along with the rest of the rioters last night, mesmerized with the destruction. The flames had lit something inside him, something that felt joyful at the sight of a young terrified Ivet reduced to a bloody chunk of unrecognizable meat beneath the crowd’s clubs. He had yelled encouragement until his throat was hoarse.”
“the newly arrived Ivets being hunted down and killed. Beaten into the mud with makeshift clubs, or gored by baying sayce to the sound of cheers. If they looked through the window at an angle they would be able to see boats of all sizes sailing hurriedly out of the circular polyp harbours for the safety of the water. I hate Adamists, Lori said. Only Adamists could do this to one another. They do it because they don’t know one another. They don’t love, they can only lust and fear.”
“Now Horst Elwes looked at the speck of red light and felt the dry weight of aeons press in on his mind again. To have the existence of supernatural divinity proven like this was a hideous travesty.”
“Frank had been faintly dubious about coming to Lalonde. But now he had to admit it was the greatest decision he’d ever made. A man could sit back every evening and see what he’d achieved.”
“She returned her attention to the tall captain. She was annoyed at the way his gaze seemed to be fastened on her breasts.”
“And its strong continuing religious beliefs were an indication of how widespread the faculty was, granting the “supernatural” events a respectable orthodoxy.”
“Horst didn’t believe in ghosts.”
“So he held his services in the hall, and never complained when only thirty or forty people turned up. The church must be a focal point for unity, a place where people could come together and share their faith, not a baron demanding tribute.”
“We should throw away our arcologies and our starships, and live like the Lord intended”
“And he saved them. My son. Because of him, they will live, and have children, and laugh. But it hurts! That’s because we’re human, more so than Adamists can ever be. Our empathy means we can never hide from what we feel, and that’s good.”
“Thank you.AndGraeae’s eggs have been lost as well. What a terrible, filthy thing to do. I hate Adamists. No, that is beneath us. See, Eileen and the marines share our loss. It is not Adamists. Only individuals. Always individuals. Even Edenists have our failures, do we not? Yes. We do, she said, because it was true enough.”
“Without its captain, the blackhawk would have to obey an Edenist.”
