Gordon R. Dickson > Quotes

“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake

“Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.”
― Gordon R. Dickson

“John Le Carre said that authenticity is less important than plausibility.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Wolf and Iron

“Now our world is at the present time firmly in the grip of a mechanical monster, whose head - if you want to call it that - is the World Engineer's Complex. That monster is opposed to us and can keep all too good a tab on us through every purchase we make with our credit numbers, every time we use the public transportation or eat a meal or rent a place to live.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Necromancer

“There never was a throne yet built so high that it could not be rocked by laughter from below.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier, Ask Not

“Facing facts is definitely preferable to facing defeat.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Dorsai!

“More blood’s been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake

“live today as if it was ur last and don't ever say it is impossible cos nothing great was achieved with ease”
― Dickson

“Onward, and up, and up again, until the impossible was achieved, all barriers were broken, all pains conquered, all abilities possessed. Until all was lightning and no darkness left.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier, Ask Not

“Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time’s worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be.”
― Gordon R. Dickson

“Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Dorsai!

“But you keep fighting!”
“Of course!” said Child. “I am of God, whatever or whoever else is not. I must testify to Him by placing my body against the enemy while that body lasts; and by protecting those that my small strength may protect, until my personal end. What is it to me that all the peoples of all the worlds choose to march toward the nether pit? What they do in their sins is no concern of mine. Mine only is concern for God, and the way of God’s people of whom I am one. In the end, all those who march pitward will be forgotten; but I and those like me who have lived their faith will be remembered by the Lord—other than that I want nothing and I need nothing.”

Godlun dropped his face into his hands and sat for a moment. When he took his hands away again and raised his head, Hal saw that the skin of his face was drawn and he looked very old.
“It’s all right for you,” he whispered.
“It is fleshly loves that concern thee,” said Child, nearly as softly. “I know, for I remember how it was in the little time I had with my wife; and I remember the children unborn that she and I dreamed of together. It is thy children thou wouldst protect in these dark days to come; and it was thy hope that I could give you reason to think thou couldst do so. But I have no such hope to give. All that thou lovest will perish. The Others will make a foul garden of the worlds of humankind and there will be none to stop them. Turn thee to God, my brother, for nowhere else shalt thou find comfort.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“We’re painted savages, nothing more, in spite of what we like to think of as some thousands of years of civilization. Only our present paint’s called clothing and our caves called buildings”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“We wouldn’t be capable of hope, if hope had no meaning.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“Contented children are valuable, as is the peace that surrounds them.”
― Gordon Dickson

“They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier, Ask Not

“I’m not an expert,” said Cletus. “I’m a scholar. There’s a difference. An expert’s a man who knows a great deal about his subject. A scholar’s someone who knows all there is that’s available to be known about it.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake

“I, wanderer, stand awaiting the signal.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Way of the Pilgrim

“It was hard to let go of cherished illusions; but he had no choice. Gradually, as he faced that fact, his convulsive grip on the belief that life must be fair, or else it could”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Dragon and the George

“Suppose it was even as you think,” he went on, even more gently. “Suppose that all you say was a fact, and that our Elders were but greedy tyrants, ourselves abandoned here by their selfish will and set to fulfill a false and prideful purpose. No.” Jamethon’s voice rose. “Let me attest as if it were only for myself. Suppose that you could give me proof that all our Elders lied, that our very Covenant was false. Suppose that you could prove to me”—his face lifted to mine and his voice drove at me—“that all was perversion and falsehood, and nowhere among the Chosen, not even in the house of my father, was there faith or hope! If you could prove to me that no miracle could save me, that no soul stood with me, and that opposed were all the legions of the universe, still I, I alone, Mr. Olyn, would go forward as I have been commanded, to the end of the universe, to the culmination of eternity. For without my faith I am but common earth. But with my faith, there is no power can stay me!”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier, Ask Not

“A man with hallucinations he cannot stand, trying to strangle himself in a homemade straight jacket, is not a pretty sight”
― Gordon R. Dickson, In the Bone

“You don’t quench ambition by feeding it any more than you quench a fire the same way... To an ambitious man, what he already has is nothing. It’s what he doesn’t have that counts.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake

“There was a minority among the human race, as there always had been, that found comfort in trading a personal freedom of mind and body for the relief of clinging to a stronger certainty than they were able to produce within themselves.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Last Master

“it’s a bad practice to go changing plans without strong reason.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier, Ask Not

“fighting an endless war and getting nowhere, surrounded by those who found simply being in the war enough to justify their existence. He”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Forever Man

“Faith,” said Amid to him, the third day out of Coby, “in its large sense, is more than just the capacity to believe. What it is, is the concept of a personal identity with a specific, incontrovertible version of reality. True faith is untouchable. By definition anything that attacks it is not only false but doomed to be exposed as such. Which is why we have martyrs. The ultimate that can be offered against any true faithholder to force him to change his beliefs is a threat to destroy him utterly, to cancel out his universe, leaving only nothingness. But for the true faithholder, even this threat fails, since he, and that in which he has faith, are one; and, by definition, that in which he has faith is indestructible.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“It did not mean that the explanation was always immediately available. But nothing happened without a reason; particularly as far as the actions of the higher mammals were concerned. There had to be a cause for every action. That”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Wolf and Iron

“Like most people who knew themselves to be naturally favored with intelligence, his natural ego had led him unconsciously to doubt that there was much, if any, range of intellect beyond his own. But he forced himself to consider now the possibility that there might be as large a range above him as he knew to be below him—and”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Last Master

“there is no future—only the choice between the present as they want it or nothing at all. He and those like him lose nothing in their own terms by trading a future that is valueless for them for a here and now that sees them get what they want. But the real price of what they want is an end to all dreams—including”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Final Encyclopedia

“How can I want to be someplace else while you're still here?”
― Gordon R. Dickson, The Dragon and the George