Liu Cixin

No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.

Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.

It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.

To effectively contain a civilization’s development and disarm it across such a long span of time, there is only one way: kill its science.

Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance.

I’m a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass.

Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.