John Barnes

People who put principles before people are people who hate people. They don’t much care about how well it works, just about how right it is . . . they may even like it better if it inflicts enough pain.

— John Barnes

[Regarding politicians] . . . like any group of people selected for ambition and nothing else, they turn out to be a pretty bad lot. Like mandarins in China, colonial administrators in the British Empire, lawyers in old North America, or the reconstruction agencies after the Slaughter -- individually there are decent people who do some good, but as a class they’re amoral, vicious leeches with a good cover story.

— John Barnes

They’re so dedicated to logic and reason that common sense hasn’t got much to do with it.

— John Barnes

He’s stunned numb when she takes his hand and says, “Let’s give it a try. I’ve been thinking maybe I don’t bend enough or try to see anyone else’s point of view.”

— John Barnes

Work does not cause money; getting paid causes money.

— John Barnes

Philosophic clarity has been a key to his life in business, and he doesn’t fall for facile or self-flattering descriptions—not even, usually, for the self-flattery of thinking he is immune to self-flattery.

— John Barnes

Don’t get mad, and don’t waste time getting even.Get ahead.

— John Barnes

Yeats fussed about things falling apart and the center not being able to hold. What really happened was that the center ceased to exist altogether.

— John Barnes

Most people think the world is out to get them, because they have all the evidence they need—they don’t get enough of what they want. But that doesn’t make it so.

— John Barnes

It’s a game against the clock, but what isn’t?

— John Barnes

It is characteristic of information that it can be stolen an all but unlimited number of times.

— John Barnes

It’s a long step down the road to paranoia, but it’s been a proverb for a hundred years that being paranoid does not mean that they aren’t out to get you.

— John Barnes

Too bad about all those people, but as Hassan says, compassion speaks well of its holder but does little for its recipient.

— John Barnes

The only thing Carla has ever learned to like about dealing with power is how easy it is to embarrass people who have it.

— John Barnes

Experimentally she thinks about dumping toxic waste in pristine wilderness and killing the last great apes on earth with a club. She still finds both those thoughts disgusting. This is a relief; it seems to her that she’s just selfish, not evil.She was always taught they’re the same thing. She hopes she remembers, when she gets out of all this, that they’re not.

— John Barnes

Once I’m dead, I can afford to be patient.

— John Barnes

Once you understand what money can do it gets harder to live without it.

— John Barnes

Are you up to faking being sincere underneath faking being fake?

— John Barnes

He wonders if there is some requirement that you have to be an idiot to be a politician.

— John Barnes

He’s always known the real way to money is not through production but through control; “The hotel owner gets rich owning the keys, the maids stay poor keeping the toilets clean,” as one of his biz profs back at Madison used to say.

— John Barnes

The beautiful earth is being crapped up by an excess of people—lovely as individuals, towns, and cultures, but hideous in such profusion.

— John Barnes

The drive to see what’s over the next hill is in part the fear that one may never know, that if one doesn’t go over the hill today, one may never get farther than the village graveyard.

— John Barnes

With diligent effort he has established that there is no statistical basis for Murphy’s Law. He has also established that he believes in it anyway.

— John Barnes

Finally she resorts to the oldest tactic of all, telling the truth.

— John Barnes

It's a good idea for diplomats to keep their word in small matters. It makes the later complete betrayals more of a surprise.

— John Barnes

Almost every culture in the Thousand Cultures had some wisdom literature, and much of it was the same between any two cultures. . . . Cultures tend to be alike in much of what they think are the basic virtues, but one of the ones they are most alike in, though it rarely appears in their book of wisdom, is: Distrust strangers, fear foreigners, dread novelty.

— John Barnes

And just like this, all of a sudden, your people and mine will begin to talk?" "It only looks sudden from some places. Running off a cliff is sudden if you don't know it's there, even if you have been running toward it for days." "That's not a reassuring metaphor." "It isn't meant to be.

— John Barnes

Shan had always said that in any multiple choice about human motivation, the real answer was always "all of the above."

— John Barnes

If you want to learn a culture, you have to learn how to like what it likes, rather than go looking for something that you like.

— John Barnes

In discussing the existence, or not, of the soul: "I am Caledon. Quite a few of my fellow Caledons still believe there is some essence to a human being, something that makes a person unique." "And you don't." "I don't. I see that people who believe in anything beyond plain physical reality are mainly engaged in making themselves or others miserable."

— John Barnes

There is a saying among those of us who have careers with the Council of Humanity that skiers, cooks, painters, and diplomats must work with what is in front of them.

— John Barnes

Human beings always say they prefer peace, but it takes a saint to talk us into not assaulting our neighbors.

— John Barnes

One of the stranger beliefs in science fiction is a passionate belief in Beautiful Writing--lots and lots of extraspecial exciting words thrown no hurled no CASCADED upon the reader in a shimmering shower of precious verbal gleaming gleanings and a singing pillar of righteous fiery syntactic spinach. The only thing that was good in that sentence was the spinach, and the hell with it.

— John Barnes

I was a real fast food junkie - KFC, McDonald's - but all the training kept it off.

— John Barnes