Iain Banks Quotes

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.

One should never mistake pattern for meaning.

Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place - and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all - so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

Political correctness is what right-wing bigots call what everybody else calls being polite

A guilty system recognizes no innocents.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

There's an old Sysan saying that the soup of life is salty enough without adding tears to it.

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots... in fact I think they have to be... a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement.

My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it.

One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.

It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those

All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself. Very specific; this bit, here, right now. All the rest was fantasy.

Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities.

There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.

I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.

People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.

If you have any helpful suggestions I'd be pleased to hear them. If all you can do is make snide insinuations then it would probably benefit all concerned if you bestowed the fruits of your prodigious wit on someone with the spare time to give them the consideration they doubtless deserve.

I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.

If this goes badly and I make a crater, I want it named after me!

The History Of The Universe In Three Words CHAPTER ONE Bang! CHAPTER TWO sssss CHAPTER THREE crunch. THE END

The bomb lives only as it is falling.