Martian Quotes

“Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“It was all very puzzling—both that Jill could smell still more like Jill… and that Dorcas should wish to smell like Jill when she already smelled like herself… and that Jubal would say that Dorcas smelled like a cat when she did not. There was a cat who lived on the place (not as a pet, but as co-owner); on rare occasions it came to the house and deigned to accept a handout. The cat and Mike had grokked each other at once, and Mike had found its carniverous thoughts most pleasing and quite Martian. He had discovered, too, that the cat's name (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) was not the cat's name at all, but he had not told anyone this because he could not pronounce the cat's real name; he could only hear it in its head.
The cat did not smell like Dorcas.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I wish there were a way to spend more time on the surface. But oh well. 31 sols will have to do.”
― Andy Weir, Diary of an AssCan

“You stumble upon an unhappy Martian sentry on a mission and shoot ineffectually at his powersuit a few times before he pulps you with his laserbeam eyes and hideous poisonous-gas breath. Glory!”
― Daniel Keidl, Armageddon: Pick Your Plot

“Also, I'll lose half a liter of water per day to breathing until the humidity in the Hab reaches its maximum and water starts condensing on every surface. Then I'll be licking the walls. Yay.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“If one does all these things to a human being, what is left is no longer precisely a human being. It is a man plus large elements of hardware.

The man has become a cybernetic organism: a cyborg.”
― Frederick Pohl

“You can completely transform your life by transmuting your martian energy.”
― Robin S. Baker

“He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 61 How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Don't just discover . . . Encounter!”
― J.P. Osterman

“Si les peuples de la Terre n'étaient pas préparés à la venue des Martiens, c'était entièrement leur faute.”
― Frederic Brown

“Giants in Jeans Sonnet 30

Earth and Mars, what is the difference,
Mars is barren, Earth isn't much behind!
Mars is barren for there's no advanced species,
Earth is made barren by its native intelligent kind.
We haven't yet learnt to take care of Earth,
Yet we are now headed for Mars as colonizer.
With the money it'll take to get to Mars,
We can literally end world hunger.
Mark you, I am not against space exploration,
But there's what I call existential priority.
I guess robots who vacation at high altitude,
Are least likely to fathom what’s humanity.
Advancement that ignores human suffering,
After a brief flight, eventually brings universal ruin.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth

“Who does what for why and where?”
― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles