Robert Sheckley > Quotes

“Sanity is a matter of consensus.”
― Robert Sheckley, Options

“- "What is reality?"
- "One of the many possible illusions.”
― Robert Sheckley, Options

“Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a house-building business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called 'religion,' and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor. ”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“Action isn’t my forte. I’m an expert on contemplation and mild regret.”
― Robert Sheckley, Immortality, Inc.

“She was an extremely attractive woman if you liked the type, which could best be described as homicidal schizophrenic paranoiac with kittenish overtones.”
― Robert Sheckley, The 10th Victim

“It's the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is FREE. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what to the religions do with this? They say, "Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us." The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the fact of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable -- a routine miracle.”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“You must realize, Mr. Blaine, that a man is not his body, for he receives his body accidentally. He is not his skills, for those are frequently born of necessity. He is not his talents, which are produced by heredity and by early environmental factors. He is not the sicknesses to which he may be predisposed, and he is not the environment that shapes him.”
― Robert Sheckley, Immortality, Inc.

“a man is not his body, for he receives his body accidentally. He is not his skills, for those are frequently born of necessity. He is not his talents, which are produced by heredity and by early environmental factors. He is not the sicknesses to which he may be predisposed, and he is not the environment that shapes him. A man contains all these things, but he is greater than their total.”
― Robert Sheckley, Immortality Inc.

“The aim of intelligence is to put the whole goddamned human race out of work.”
― Robert Sheckley

“I have simply given up a longevity which I never possessed anyhow. I have turned away from the con game which the gods run in their heavenly side-show. I no longer care under which shell the pea of immortality might be found. I don't need it. I have my moment which is quite enough.”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“Is there anything you can do?'
'Well, in college I was studying-'
'Don't give me your goddamned life story! I'm interested in your trade, skill, talent, profession, ability, whatever you want to call it. What, specifically, can you do?'
'Well,'Marvin said, 'I guess, when you put it that way, I can't do anything much.”
― Robert Sheckley, Mindswap

“Most of Seakirk's inhabitants were indifferent to the spectacle of corruption in high places and low, the gambling, the gang wars, the teen-age drinking. They were used to the sight of their roads crumbling, their ancient water mains bursting, their power plants breaking down, their decrepit old buildings falling apart, while the bosses built bigger homes, longer swimming pools and warmer stables. People were used to it.”
― Robert Sheckley, A Ticket to Tranai

“A great majority of Terrans were idealists, and they believed fervently in concepts such as truth, justice, mercy, and the like. And not only did they believe, they also let those noble concepts guide their actions—except when it would be inconvenient or unprofitable. When that happened, they acted expediently, but continued to talk moralistically. This meant that they were “hypocrites” —a term which every race has its counterpart of.”
― Robert Sheckley, Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley

“An error which is not perpetuated cannot be viewed as any error at all.”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“When you have a project, do it exactly as you see fit; then fit the facts around the event, not the other way around.”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“Pour la carotte, le lapin est la parfaite incarnation du Mal.”
― Sheckley Robert

“If justice really existed, there would be no need for law.”
― Robert Sheckley, Mindswap

“What was I supposed to do? Was I meant to be nothing but God? I had tried the God business and found it too limited. It was a job for a simple-minded egomaniac. There had to be something else for me to do – something more meaningful, more expressive of my true self. I am convinced of it! That is my problem, and that is the question I ask of you: What am I to do with myself?”
― Robert Sheckley, Dimension of Miracles

“Dead or alive, you will retain all your rights.”
― Robert Sheckley , The Status Civilization

“Dramocles got up from the operating table thinking he had just had a massage, and now wanted to take a brisk walk. A posthypnotic command took him a hundred yards from Fish’s laboratory. Then he heard the explosion. Hurrying back, he saw that Dr. Fish had been blown up. Dramocles couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to blow up an inoffensive android like Fish. He never considered the possibility that he had done it himself, since exploded androids tell no tales.”
― Robert Sheckley, Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera

“Here she was trying to teach him the Peasant Shuffle. He could not hope to master it all in a night, of course; at the Peasants’ School in Zug they had spent an entire semester on Cringing alone.”
― Robert Sheckley

“Most men lead lives of quiet aspiration.”
― Robert Sheckley, Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?: Stories

“All of us live by the employment of countless untested assumptions, the truth of falsehood of which we can determine only through the hazard of our lives. Since most of us value our lives more than the truth, we leave such drastic tests for the fanatics.”
― Robert Sheckley, Mindswap

“For love, as he knew it, was an aberration, a form of temporary insanity, a shortlived state of autosuggestion.
Love was a state which a wise man would prudently avoid.”
― Robert Sheckley, The 10th Victim

“Паника - инструмент, с помощью которого контроль над твоим телом переходит тому, кто заставил тебя паниковать.”
― Robert Sheckley, Такие разные миры

“Overhead, a Hawk was zeroing in on a watchbird. The armored murder machine had learned a lot in a few days. Its sole function was to kill. At present it was impelled toward a certain type of living organism, metallic like itself. But the Hawk had just discovered that there were other types of living organisms, too— Which had to be murdered.”
― Robert Sheckley, The Robert Sheckley Megapack: 15 Classic Science Fiction Stories

“The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens' eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here.”
― Robert Sheckley, Forever

“These two races hunted each other, lived and died for each other, and, through ignorance or guile, ignored any relationship between each other. The relationship was utterly symbiotic, but completely unacknowledged by either race. In fact, each race pretended that it alone was a Civilized Intelligence, and that the other was bestial, contemptible, and of no account. And it now occured to both of themthat they were, in equal measure, participants in the general concept of Humanity.”
― Robert Sheckley, Mindswap