Charles Stross Quotes

I'm an optimist. My own fiction, while it has its own dark warnings about pitfalls ahead, depicts the potential of science to improve society by networking human minds.

The true science and study of man is man.

Those who profess the faith of Life regard the ideals of mankind as an expression of man's higher needs. Ideals which were once incentives to development thus become a drag upon it whenever life's needs demand new forms that are not recognised by the prevailing idealism.

Fiction is the study of the human condition under imagined circumstances.

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

There is no doubt: the study of man is just beginning, at the same time that his end is in sight.

We like to believe that, in our lifetime, the human condition is improving.

Society sometimes discovers facts that society has a hard time getting used to.

Science, which has transformed the material world, gives man the power of transforming himself.

No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's.

All the marvels of science and the gains of culture belong to the nation as a whole, and never again will man’s brain and human genius be used for oppression and exploitation.

It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system. -- With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature [us] will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do

Are all humans human, or are some more human than others?

Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post Gothic mode.

Given that I was interested in physics, I think it was easier for me to do physics in India.

Mankind is a science that defies definitions.

What Homo sapien imagines, he may slowly convert himself to.

Growing up in Kenya, slum life was not far away. I had family that lived in slums, so I visited them often, and so I've seen and interacted with abject poverty. But I also know that because of that, poverty is not the definition of the people that live there.

Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people.

Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,--the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead.The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.

Ultimately we've only got humanity to work with. It's only clay we've got.

To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them.

Everybody always talks about the science fiction genre, in particular, which always makes me think about people in spaceships. I can appreciate that, but that's not really where I think my dramatist aspect lies.