A fanatic's willingness to kill or be killed in the service of a cause cannot prove the rightness of that cause.
Poul AndersonBetter a life like a falling star, brief bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.
Poul AndersonI have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
Poul AndersonHe had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.
Poul AndersonIf we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.
Poul AndersonColonization means potential immortality for the human genus. Man's safety on Earth was never great, and it dwindles hourly. Disarmament, even world government, will not guarantee survival in an age when population presses natural resources to the limit and when the knowledge of how to work mischief on a planetary scale is ever more widely diffused among peoples who may grow ever more desperate.
Poul Anderson