Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it.
~ Iain Banks

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Mocking the wisdom that comes with age is a fit sport only for those who expect never to attain much of it themselves.
~ Iain Banks

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You can draw the blinds in a brothel, but people still know what you’re doing.
~ Iain Banks

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

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What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn’t lead to wisdom? And what’s wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do?
~ Iain Banks

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Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.
~ Iain Banks

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One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them.
~ Iain Banks

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There is a saying that we provide the machines with an end, and they provide us with the means.
~ Iain Banks

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A guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it.
~ Iain Banks

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

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