1
Economics was like psychology, a pseudoscience trying to hide that fact with intense theoretical hyperelaboration. And gross domestic product was one of those unfortunate measurement concepts, like inches or the British thermal unit, that ought to have been retired long before.Kim Stanley Robinson
2
He was not interested in what they were doing, not any of it– it was both ugly and abstract, a continuous manipulation of people devoid of any of the tangible rewards that so much work had. That’s politics....Kim Stanley Robinson
3
The triviality of the current scene usually put her off, but now she supposed that the politics of the moment always looked petty and stupid; only later did it take on the look of respectable statecraft, of immutable History.Kim Stanley Robinson
4
They could do anything. That, however, was part of what made it difficult to bring [it] to a close. Infinite possibility was going to collapse, in the act of choosing, to the single world line of history. The future becoming the past: there was something disappointing in this passage through the loom, this so-sudden diminution from infinity to one, the collapse from potentiality to reality which was the action of time itself. The potential was so delicious– the way they could have, potentially, all the best parts of all..time, combined magically into some superb, as-yet-unseen synthesis– or throw all that aside, and finally strike a new path to the heart of just government.To go from that to the mundane problematic..was an inevitable letdown, and instinctively people put it off.Kim Stanley Robinson