Jack L. Chalker > Quotes

“Just because your whole life is going to hell doesn't mean you have to walk there.”
― Jack L. Chalker, The River of Dancing Gods

“...it is in the very fundamentals of evil that one always condemns it when they see it but rationalizes it when they do it.”
― Jack L. Chalker, The Ninety Trillion Fausts

“You can’t be a non-conformist if you don’t wear the proper uniform.”
― Jack L. Chalker

“The only thing that makes something impossible is ignorance.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Midnight at the Well of Souls

“Curse him to eternal damnation! Yes! Of course!" came the emotional reply.

"Don't curse him," I said softly. "Remember--he's only a machine, just an imperfect mirror of ourselves. We made him what he is--the disease, the cancer."

There was nothing else to say, because that left only cursing ourselves, and we were already cursed.”
― Jack L. Chalker, The Web of the Chozen

“All technology, for example, is magic to a primitive.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Midnight at the Well of Souls

“There are only three kinds of people in the universe, no matter what their race or form. They are scoundrels, hypocrites, and sheep.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Exiles at the Well of Souls

“Nothing has taken more money or killed more people in the history of your race than religion,”
― Jack L. Chalker, The Return of Nathan Brazil

“Patience is a virtue best left to the dead, who can afford it,”
― Jack L. Chalker, Exiles at the Well of Souls

“War may be the most efficient stimulus of innovation and technological advance,”
― Jack L. Chalker, The Return of Nathan Brazil

“If you don’t lose that fear of death, then you can never appreciate life or take the chances life gives you.”
― Jack L. Chalker, The Sea is Full of Stars

“An intelligent man [doesn’t] know everything, he simply [knows] how to look everything up quickly and efficiently."

- Jack Chalker, Songs of the Dancing Gods”
― Jack Chalker

“Magic is doing something the other guy can’t do. We haven’t learned how to do it yet, so it’s magic. When we learn how and understand it, it’s science.”
― Jack L. Chalker, The Return of Nathan Brazil

“All magic means is a line between knowledge and ignorance,”
― Jack L. Chalker, Midnight at the Well of Souls

“Love is the most abused word in history. It is, simply, caring more for others than you do for yourself.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Quest for the Well of Souls

“the true test of awesome power is the ability not to use it.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Quest for the Well of Souls

“It’s sometimes a blessing that great historical figures don’t live to see what people do to their visions.”
― Jack L. Chalker, The Return of Nathan Brazil

“When a nation was faced with a choice between abstract principle or complete self-interest, it took self-interest every time.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Twilight at the Well of Souls

“It is only life that has meaning, not death,”
― Jack L. Chalker, Twilight at the Well of Souls

“It makes absolutely no difference in the scheme of things whether all but a handful of people live or die. No more than the importance of a single flower, or blade of grass, or vegetable, or bird. It would make no difference if those men who held that ancient pass or that equally ancient fort had, instead, died of disease or old age or in a saloon fight. But it made a difference that they died where they did. It mattered. It justified their whole existence.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Twilight at the Well of Souls

“I'm a nut, I know I'm a nut, I enjoy being a nut so I'll stay a nut.”
― Jack L. Chalker

“He sat down at the lab screen and thought a moment. “Put up a wide scan of the Lilith organism,” he told the computer. The screen in front of him lit up and showed a strange enlargement. Its closest relative was a virus, yet it was infinitely smaller, an alien abstract design of tiny lines and pits actually able to combine on an atomic level with actual molecules—molecules! It wasn’t a real creature but a few extra chemical ingredients on the end of a molecular formula, extras that somehow didn’t really change what the molecule was but nonetheless controlled it.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

“Was having someone else hunt and kill for you any different, morally, than doing it yourself, or was it worse because it removed you from the act while still requiring the kill?”
― Jack L. Chalker, Ghost of the Well of Souls

“Selfless men wind up in neglected graves.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Twilight at the Well of Souls

“It’s easy to rattle the saber if the enemy’s five thousand or more kilometers distant.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Twilight at the Well of Souls

“there was supposed to be this man who was Jewish and claimed to be God’s son. For this the powers-that-be killed him, because they were scared he might lead a revolution or something. Supposedly he was to come back from the dead. One Jew was supposed to have cursed him at his execution and been told that he would stay until this god-man returned.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Exiles at the Well of Souls

“Better to end it than to bring into being generations yet to be born to suffer all the more!”
― Jack L. Chalker, Demons of the Dancing Gods

“truth of oratory—it is not what you say but how you say it that counts for everything. Consider just how little a politician actually says, as compared to what his or her listeners believe about that politician.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Demons of the Dancing Gods

“War is the greatest of teachers, and not all of its lessons are bad. Their cost is just so terribly high.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Exiles at the Well of Souls

“Orwell. Wrote a book that said that a totalitarian society sustains itself by the basic selfishness of everybody. When the chips were down, his hero and heroine betrayed each other.”
― Jack L. Chalker, Midnight at the Well of Souls