Iain Banks Quotes

Iain Menzies Banks (1954-2013)

Iain Banks was a Scottish author, writing mainstream fiction as Iain Banks and science fiction as Iain M. Banks, adding the initial of his adopted middle name Menzies. (Iain Banks Quotes)

“After doing extensive research, I can definitely tell you that single malt whiskies are good to drink.”
Iain Banks

“All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people’s, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.”
Iain Banks

“An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop.”
Iain Banks

“Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot.”
Iain Banks

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

“Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.”
Iain Banks

“Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.”
Iain Banks

“I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.”
Iain Banks

“I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.”
Iain Banks

“It is good to remove oneself sometimes and get a sense of perspective from a little further away.”
Iain Banks

“It’s a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those.”
Iain Banks

“One should never mistake pattern for meaning.”
Iain Banks

“People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots… in fact I think they have to be… a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement.”
Iain Banks

“People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.”
Iain Banks

“Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn’t really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”
Iain Banks

“The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others.”
Iain Banks

“The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channeled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.”
Iain Banks