Quotes from books I've read
2025-11-15
Written by: my
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
In connection with this a weapon of war, the Synthetic Freedom Fighter, had been modified; able to function on an alien world, the humanoid robot — strictly speaking, the organic android — had become the mobile donkey engine of the colonization program
— Chapter 2
LOL, mobile donkey engine is a hilarious combination of words!
Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test, which made him in popular parlance a chickenhead.
— Chapter 2
At this point, I read the remainder of the book away from my computer, mostly on the train commuting to and from work.
Foundation
Debarkation Building was tremendous. The roof was almost lost in the heights. Gaal could almost imagine that clouds could form beneath its immensity.
— Part I, Chapter 2
A figure detached itself from anonymity…
— Part I, Chapter 2
If you’re born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then comning up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.
— Part I, Chapter 3
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
— Part II, Chapter 5
I consider violence an uneconomical way of attaining an end. There are always better substitutes, though they may sometimes be a little less direct.
— Part III, Chapter 6
Never let your morals stand in the way of doing what is right.
— Part IV, Chapter 1
There’s no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances.
— Part V, Chapter 4
Into Thin Air
However, with him was his uncle, Pete Schoening, a living Himalyan legend. … Pete was even more famous, however, for playing a heroic role in an unsuccessful expeditioin to K2 in 1953, the same year Hillary and Tenzing reach the peak of Everest. … At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.
— Chapter 7
I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain.
— Chapter 10
Later that day, Göran Kropp, the twenty-nine-year-old Swedish soloist, passed Camp Two on his way down to Base Camp, looking utterly worked. On October 16, 1995, he had left Stockholm on a custom-built bicycle loaded with 240 pounds of gear, intending to travel round-trip from seal level in Sweden to the top of Everest entirely under his own power, without Sherpa support or bottled oxygen. it was an exceedingly ambitious goal, but Kropp had the credentials to pull it off: he’d been on six previous Himalayan expeditions and had made solo ascents of Broad Peak, Cho Oyu, and K2.
— Chapter 11
Relying on bottled oxygen as an aid to ascent is a practice that’s sparked acrimonious debate ever since the British first took experimental oxygen rigs to Everest in 1921. (Skeptical Sherpas promptly dubbed the unwieldy canisters “English Air.”)
— Chapter 11
When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath… I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again.
— excerpt from The Crystal Horizon by Reinhold Messner, Chapter 11