David Brin Quotes

Fair play doesn't pertain in bargaining. What matters there is leverage.

You shouldn't go around the world behaving ruthlessly when you don't have to. Sometimes you do have to. There is only so much pie to go around. If you're going to take more than your fair share of pie, as socialists would look at it, then someone else is not getting his. That means you've got to take it away from them.

When a match has equal partners then I fear not.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

As governor, I don't want my fair share. I want more than my fair share.

You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.

My definition of good is that you understand that this is a question of power. That you be willing to give up some power. That you be willing to give up some resources.

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

Indeed, the existence of class, of social hierarchy, is as old as man himself. It prevails in the jungle where strength determines hierarchy; among men, it has also been savagely the same, whereby rulers vested with power through personal combat, or through lineal heritage as in the case of royalty, ravage their subjects.

The reality is that when three or four networks are at the table with three or four political parties, someone is going to be the victim.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.

I remember an article, I can't recall who by, it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which said that now the Wall was down, there could be no more class war. Only someone with money could ever say such a thing.

The real problem is that the way that power is given out in our society pits us against each other.

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

It's a rough and tumble game whenever power is involved - people's ambitions, their desires, their competitive spirit will often push them to play outside the rules. It's dramatic, it's interesting, and I think it's something we can all identify with to a degree.

Each one of our ideas should benefit the people with less power than us.

Justice often means taking power from some who have it and giving it to some who do not.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

To detail the real evils of aristocracy, they must be seen in Europe.

When we have congressmen and top state politicians all working together with powerful interests, what have we got to fight against them? Not much, except to ask for justice.

Our democracy has been marred by imperialism.

[Politics is a] war of all against all … a quest for power after power that ceaseth only in death.

Whenever, and from whatever causes, it might happen; and happen it would, that any one of these nations or confederacies should rise on the scale of political importance much above the degree of their neighbors, that moment would those neighbors behold her with envy and fear.