Empire Of The Ants Quotes
"In the few seconds it will take you to read these 4 lines: 40 human beings and 700 million ants will have been born on Earth. 30 human beings and 500 million ants will have died on Earth."
"Everything needs doing. It'll be like turning a prison into a hotel."
"Me? I'm alive. It's a full-time occupation at my age."
"Old people still live alone, plenty of people are still out of work and cars still give off toxic fumes."
"I thought we'd all have private planes and take off from our own balconies by now."
"It's getting hotter and hotter, too. In my day, it wasn't this hot."
"The average life expectancy has gone up, as well as the number of divorces, the level of air pollution and the length of queues in the underground."
"We do not know the others. But as far as ours is concerned, we know that it began with the explosion of the 'smallest', 'simplest' atom, hydrogen."
"Our basic law, the one around which all others are organized, is more and more complex."
"One day, inevitably, fingers will turn these pages, eyes will read these words and brains will interpret their meaning."
"Errors in genetic programming sometimes caused psychological accidents."
"It's better to consolidate your strong points than to try to control everything."
"When your enemy seems stronger than you, do something that defies his understanding."
"There's no harm in it. That's how the system works."
"Someone who asks a question is stupid for five minutes but someone who doesn't ask is stupid for life."
"Our most distant forbears were afraid of mosquitoes, which gave them fevers."
"Insects are disconcerting. They are smaller and more fragile than us, yet they goad us and menace us."
"Insects were long considered evil incarnate."
"The only way to overcome these difficulties was absolute communication."
"It serves those black ants right for being so pretentious."
"The refugees who flooded into Bel-o-kan and swelled the throng of mercenaries related that the dwarves had avant-garde combat strategies."
"They were still not seriously alarmed, though."
"Ants are the only social insects to maintain an army of aggression."
"The dwarf queens who had been taken prisoner recounted the history and customs of the dwarves."
"It was a land of plenty, where the dwarves had built the 'old' Shi-gae-pou."
"The warmth of the first ray of sunlight, filtering through a cloud, sparked off the decision to move into the attack."
"The Belokanians had at last made up their minds to attack."
"The city of Bel-o-kan had just invented the tank."
"The russet ants reached the crest of the hill with the dwarf legions in disorderly pursuit."
"The Belokanian legions desperately tried to find a way out."
"The only danger is that any one species may be eliminated by another."
"The absence of pain leads to a whole new world of science fiction."
"A decapitated ant emits a particular smell, the smell of fear."
"As far as the eye could see, the ground was littered with contorted corpses."
"When a man is frightened, happy or enraged, his endocrine glands produce hormones which influence his body alone."
"Enjoy your copulation! Don't worry, I’ll carry on with the investigation."
"We have put out the eye, we have cut off the nerve stimulus, we have ended the anguish."
"What would our human civilization be like if it had not got rid of its major predators?"
"Nature hates uniformity and loves diversity."
"Everything began again from zero at the end of missions."
"The raw photons she absorbed through her eyes made her feel drunk."
"Ants offer us a fantastic opportunity to see a society in action."
"An enemy who attacks is worrying but an enemy who disappears is even more worrying."
"Now do you understand why no-one wants to talk to you about the termite hill of the east?"
"The human brain and the anthill have something in common, which can be symbolized by a hologram."
"Each neurone in our brains and each individual in the anthill holds all the information but only their collective activity gives rise to consciousness or 'three-dimensional thought'."
"As there were no longer any skirmishes with the termite scouts, the ants of the post of Guayei-Tyolot decided to spy in their turn."
"You never get back exactly what you've lost."
"Lizards were very sensitive to changes in the weather, far more so than ants."
"The first Guayeityolotian, the one who had shown her the trophies but refused to talk about the termites, came up to her again."
"What could be cleaner than a fly? It is forever washing itself not out of duty but out of necessity."
"It is as if God had used the planet Earth to carry out an experiment."
"The future of our Earth lies in hybridization."
"There's something seriously wrong with every part of my body and it gets harder to go on living every day."
"The best way to renew thought is to go outside the human imagination."
"The greater the obstacle, the more we must surpass ourselves."
"Ants form the second great civilization on Earth."
"How stupid of me! Even if extraterrestrials existed, we would not be able to understand them."
"We don't understand the Japanese, Tibetans or Hindus, but we are enthralled by their culture."
"The only difference between Dr Livingstone and a real ant is that he's connected to eleven pipes."