Dmitri Bilenkin

Dmitri Bilenkin (September 21, 1933 – July 28, 1987), was a Soviet science fiction author.

Quotes

The Uncertainty Principle (1978)

All quotes from the American hardcover edition published by Macmillan, ISBN 0-02-510770-4

• “In traveling to the past, you can either appear in a predetermined point in space or in a predetermined point in time. In principle, it is impossible to do both simultaneously.” (Fundamental Temporalics, A.D. 2023)
  • “The Uncertainty Principle” (p. 1)

• Here, now, in the deep Middle Ages, all this served as a safety valve. People experienced the illusion of being at one with themselves, with others, with that mystical being that was there in the church, watching over them and preserving them, chiding and blessing, enlightening and repressing, uplifting and reconciling. A completely different, anxiety-ridden emotional state, and an understandable, but repellent, spiritual world.
  • “The Uncertainty Principle” (p. 8)

• When the mind tries to guess the trajectory of a future moral act and concentrates too strenuously on contradictory concepts, the concepts themselves become unclear, because every concept is as deep-rooted and murky in its beginnings as the reality of life that gave rise to it. And the mind falters, determination slips away, and everything seems confused and wrong. That’s how thinking can sometimes destroy determination.
  • “The Uncertainty Principle” (p. 16)

• Just try telling a teenager that he’s a conformist. Ha! It’s safer to tweak a tiger’s whiskers. Yet who’s most influenced by fads and fashions? Who is the easiest to turn into a raging mob? The teenager.
  • “Final Exam” (p. 27)

• We all love mysteries in books and hate them in life. I’m no exception. After all, the reason we love mysteries in books is that the secret is revealed on the last page.
  • “The Man Who Was Present” (p. 33)

• He’s not a nut. His presence, it seems, really does stimulate the creative capabilities. All right. So what? For millions of people, that’s what you would call a profession. Teachers do not produce anything of material or intellectual value themselves. They transmit knowledge, and most important, stimulate the mental and moral growth of children—real teachers, of course. That is the great meaning of their profession, to disseminate their thoughts and actions in such a way that they interweave like a golden thread in someone else’s life and then come alive unrecognized in the discoveries and achievements of the future—a profession of utmost importance for society.
  • “The Man Who Was Present” (p. 37)

• Life is full of situations cut short, unfinished observations, everything that doesn’t fit in the parameters of a story that would make sense to strangers. We keep them to ourselves and we carry them away with us.
  • “The Man Who Was Present” (p. 41)

• That was practically blasphemy, asking Gordon for an explanation, frail octogenarian Gordon. Demanding an explanation after Gordon had made it very clear that his word was the truth. But no, in this room that was the birthplace of the unified field theory, this was not sacrilege. Both men were subject to the same law, which was greater than both of them, and that law made it necessary for Gordon to offer substantiating proof. He could not violate it, or else science would turn into religion, and he into its high priest.
  • “The Ban” (p. 51)

• “What is the aim of science?”
  “What?”
  “Man’s happiness. If science doesn’t make men happier, what good is it? Knowledge is power, a weapon, and if the scientist doesn’t care where it’s aimed, what makes him different from a mercenary soldier?”
  • “The Ban” (p. 52)

• Reason is our guide, but the eye is its most trusted counselor.
  • “Strangers’ Eyes” (p. 71)

• There are no uninteresting fates, and each man takes away the universe when he dies.
  • “A Place in Memory” (p. 85)

• There is one basic fact that holds for all living things. Evil for any form of life is anything that hinders or threatens its existence; good is anything that promotes it. It’s that way everywhere, under every sun. It’s as obvious as two times two, because otherwise, if the opposite were true, life would be dooming itself to destruction. No civilization can change the criteria for good and evil without suffering for it.
  • “Intelligence Test” (p. 101)

• I’m sure that the fantastic descriptions of interstellar travel in the science fiction of the last century made many a heart skip a beat. I really don’t want my account to be a wet blanket, but the truth is the truth: there is nothing duller than space flight.
  • “Nothing But Ice” (p. 105)

• What used to be an advantage had quickly turned into a liability, proving once more that in the mountains, as in life, nothing comes easily.
  • “The Snows of Olympus” (p. 117)

• This mountain could be a throne for God or Satan, but luckily, we are no longer children. We’ve climbed the highest peak in the solar system accessible to us, that’s all. Be happy, man!
  • “The Snows of Olympus” (p. 121)

• The professor was lost in thought. He was disturbed and worried, but proud that he was behaving like a true scientist: he wasn’t losing his head, or panicking, or believing in miracles.
  • “Things Like That Don’t Happen” (p. 148)

• “I’m not saying that you don’t exist. You exist falsely.”
  “But I’m flying!”
  “That’s the point. A man can’t fly on his own. That would be a miracle. People with little grounding in physics are apt to believe anything, but we know that there is no place for miracles in nature.”
  • “Things Like That Don’t Happen” (p. 149)

• If you’ve ever heard a physicist trying to explain to a mere mortal the meaning of quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity, you’ll understand our state. Some waves or other of time overlapping so as to create time splashes that broke off from their substratum into supratime and could be controlled – that’s all I got out of Lyova’s lectures and the popular articles written by my fellow journalists. But in the long run I wasn’t too upset about it. We use electricity without knowing a thing about electrodynamics, and I have yet to see anyone who was too bothered by that fact to go on living.
  • “Time Bank” (p. 158)