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The word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear water. (Bistami) Pg. 128Kim Stanley Robinson
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Nothing was ever normal again. Many lives change like that -- all of a sudden, and forever.Kim Stanley Robinson
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All the great moments of history have taken place inside people’s heads.Kim Stanley Robinson
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In China the egalitarian movement came not just from Zhu's vision, but also the Taoist ideas of balance, as Zhu would always point out. In Travancore it rose out of the Buddhist idea of compassion, in Yingzhou from the Hodenosaunee idea of the equality of all, in Firanja from the idea of justice before God. Everywhere the idea existed, but the world still belonged to a tiny minority of rich; wealth had been accumulating for centuries in a few hands, and the people lucky enough to be born into this old aristocracy lived in the old manner, with the rights of kings now spread among the wealthy of the Earth. Money had replaced land as the basis of power, and money flowed according to its own gravity, its laws of accumulation, which though divorced from nature, were nevertheless the laws ruling most countries on Earth, no matter their religious or philosophical ideas of love, compassion, charity, equality, goodness, and the like. Old Zhu had been right: humanity's behavior was still based on old laws, which determined how food and land and water and surplus wealth around, how the labor of the eight billions was owned. If these laws did not change, the living shell of the earth might well be wrecked, and inherited by seagulls and ants and cockroaches.Kim Stanley Robinson
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It is a long time ago. So many lives ago-- I get them all confused, don’t you?Kim Stanley Robinson
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The people are suffering. Relieving people’s poverty ought to be handled as though one were rescuing them from fire, or saving them from drowning. One cannot hesitate.Kim Stanley Robinson
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Desire is life trying to continue to be life. All living things desire, bacteria feel desire. Life is wanting.Kim Stanley Robinson
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Bold didn’t know what he felt, it changed minute by minute.Kim Stanley Robinson
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Allah protect us, ' Bold said politely. Then, in Arabic, 'In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.' In his years in Temur's army he had learned to be as much a Muslim as anyone. The Buddha did not mind what you said to be polite.Kim Stanley Robinson