Matter Quotes

“Even galaxy-spanning anarchist utopias of stupefying full-spectrum civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“it hung above the livid, bruised land like an admonition”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Ferbin's father had had the same robustly pragmatic view of religion as he’d had of everything else. In his opinion, only the very poor and downtrodden really needed religion, to make their laborious lives more bearable. People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale.”

Hyrlis looked expectantly at them. “You see?” he said. “By this reasoning we must, after all, be at the most base level of reality – or at the most exalted, however one wishes to look at it. Just as reality can blithely exhibit the most absurd coincidences that no credible fiction could convince us of, so only reality – produced, ultimately, by matter in the raw – can be so unthinkingly cruel. Nothing able to think, nothing able to comprehend culpability, justice or morality could encompass such purposefully invoked savagery without representing the absolute definition of evil. It is that unthinkingness that saves us. And condemns us, too, of course; we are as a result our own moral agents, and there is no escape from that responsibility, no appeal to a higher power that might be said to have artificially constrained or directed us.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others?”
― Ian M Banks, Matter

“Life buzzed in, fumed about, rattled around and quite thoroughly infested the entire galaxy, and probably - almost certainly - well beyond. The vast ongoingness of it all somehow put all one's own petty concerns and worries into context, making them seem not irrelevant, but of much less distressing immediacy.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Might, fury, decisive force, the willingness to smite; how her father had loved such terms and ideas, and how shallow they began to look when you saw them played out time and time again over the centuries and millennia by a thousand different species.
This is how power works, how force and authority assert themselves, this is how people are persuaded to behave in ways that are not objectively in their best interests, this is the kind of thing you need to make people believe in, this is how the unequal distribution of scarcity comes into play, at this moment and this, and this...”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“The source of my name,” the vessel had replied, “The Hundredth Idiot, is a quotation: ‘One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Part of the training of a Special Circumstances agent was learning a) that the rules were supposed to be broken sometimes, b) just how to go about breaking the rules, and c) how to get away with it, whether the rule-breaking had led to a successful outcome or not.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Holse wasn’t about to get involved in any theological arguments. He looked serious and nodded, hoping this would do.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Welcome to the future, she thought, surveying all this wordage and tat. All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“We may all be mere particles, but we are each fundamental!”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Part of him wished he’d paid more attention to the priests when they’d been trying to instruct him about this sort of thing, but then, given that he appeared to have achieved the afterlife without either faith or knowledge, what would have been the point?”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“He was starting to change his mind about the old warrior code stuff knights and princes used. Usually when they were drunk and in need of spilling their words, and trying to justify their core behavior. Behave honorably and wish for a good death. He'd always dismissed it as self-serving bullshit frankly. Most of the people he'd been told were his betters were quite vainly dishonorable. Greedy bastards wanted more the more they got. While those that weren't like that were better behaved partly because they could afford to be. Was it more honorable to starve than to steal? People would say yes. Though rarely those who actually experienced an empty belly or a child whimpering with its own hunger. Was it more honorable to starve than to steal when others had the means to feed you but chose not to? Unless, you paid with money you did not have. He thought not. If you chose to starve you became your own oppressor, keeping yourself in line, harming yourself for the temerity of being poor. When by rights that aught to be a constables job. Show any initiative or imagination, then you were called lazy, shifty, crafty, or incorrigible. So he dismissed talk of honor. It was just a way of making the rich and powerful feel better about themselves, and the powerless and poverty-stricken feel worse. But once you weren't living hand to mouth and had some ease, you had the pleasure of contemplating what life was really about and who you really were, and given that you had to die, it made sense to seek a good death. Even these Culture people, bafflingly, chose to die even when they didn't have to. With freedom from fear and wondering where your next meal was coming from or wondering how many mouths you'd have to feed next year, and whether you'd get sacked by your employer, or thrown into jail for some minor indiscretion. With freedom from that you had the choice of living a nice, calm, peaceful, ordinary life and die with your nightshirt on and impatient relatives making lots of noise around you. Or, you could end up doing something like this, however scared your body might feel, your brain could appreciate the experience... Given that you had to die, why want a bad one?”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“His feet were sore and he was growing tired of what seemed to him like pointless speculation, not to mention something dangerously close to philosophy, a field of human endeavour he had encountered but fleetingly through various exasperated tutors, though long enough to have formed the unshakeable impression that its principal purpose was to prove that one equalled zero, black was white and educated men could speak through their bottoms.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Nothing able to think, nothing able to comprehend culpability, justice or morality could encompass such purposefully invoked savagery without representing the absolute definition of evil. It is that unthinkingness that saves us. And condemns us, too, of course; we are as a result our own moral agents, and there is no escape from that responsibility, no appeal to a higher power that might be said to have artificially constrained or directed us.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“In his opinion, only the very poor and downtrodden really needed religion, to make their laborious lives more bearable. People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Everybody always thought they were right, and shared, too, the quaint belief that the very fervency of a belief, however deluded, somehow made it true.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Is this going to help or hinder us?” “Could go either way. Multiplier rather than a valuer.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“How goes your peace conference? Slowly. Having exhausted the possibilities of every other form of mass-murder they could possibly employ against each other, the natives now appear intent on boring each other to death. They may finally have discovered their true calling.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“War, famine, disease, genocide. Death, in a million different forms, often painful and protracted for the poor individual wretches involved. What god would so arrange the universe to predispose its creations to experience such suffering, or be the cause of it in others? What master of simulations or arbitrator of a game would set up the initial conditions to the same pitiless effect? God or programmer, the charge would be the same: that of near-infinitely sadistic cruelty; deliberate, premeditated barbarism on an unspeakably horrific scale.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“The more she’d learned of the ways that societies and civilisations tended to develop, and the more examples of other great leaders were presented to her, the less, in many ways, she had thought of her father. She had realised that he was just another strong man, in one of those societies, at one of those stages, in which it was easier to be the strong man than it was to be truly courageous. Might, fury, decisive force, the willingness to smite; how her father had loved such terms and ideas, and how shallow they began to look when you saw them played out time and time again over the centuries and millennia by a thousand different species. This is how power works, how force and authority assert themselves, this is how people are persuaded to behave in ways that are not objectively in their best interests, this is the kind of thing you need to make people believe in, this is how the unequal distribution of scarcity comes into play, at this moment and this, and this . .”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Unowned, making unbestowable. All share the one moment of now,”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“If it is absolutely necessary to take leave of one’s responsibilities for a while, always be sure to leave surrogates in charge who will ensure your welcome on return will be both genuine and enthusiastic”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“She wanted to tell him that it was all okay, that there was nothing to worry about, that the universe was a terrible, utterly uncaring place and then people came along and added suffering and injustice to the mix as well and it was all so much worse than he could imagine and she knew because she had studied it and lived it, even if just a little. You could make it better but it was a messy process and then you just had to try - you were obliged, duty-bound to try - to be sure that you did the right thing.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“He also believed that it was a deliberate scheme of their mentors to encourage those who were in power, or who would one day assume power, to witness the wonders that they were not being shown, so that they would never be tempted to get above themselves, so that they would always know that no matter how magnificent they appeared to themselves or those around them and regardless of what they achieved, it was all within the context of this greater, more powerful, sophisticated and ultimately far superior reality.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“we have found that the underdisciplined child will bump up against life eventually and learn their lessons that way – albeit all the harder for their parents’ earlier lack of courage and concern. The overdisciplined child lives all its life in a self-made cage, or bursts from it so wild and profligate with untutored energy they harm all about them, and always themselves. We prefer to underdiscipline, reckoning it better in the long drift, though it may seem harsher at the time.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter

“Did that make him a bad man? Perhaps, though if so then arguably all men were bad. A proposition his wife would probably agree with, as would most of the women Holse had known, from his poor mother onwards. That was not his fault either, though. Most men – most women, too, no doubt – lived and died under the general weight of the drives and needs, expectations and demands they experienced from within and without, beaten this way and that by longings for sex, love, admiration, comfort, importance and wealth and whatever else was their particular fancy, as well as being at the same time channelled into whatever furrows were deemed appropriate for them by those on high.

In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.”
― Iain M. Banks, Matter