Mark Clifton > Quotes

“The scientist who would rather refute than comprehend demonstrates he has chosen the wrong calling.”
― Mark Clifton, The Second Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

“[H]e quoted eloquently from the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and a section which had been stricken from his party's platform seventy-five years ago. He was not quite clear on what all this had to do with [the present situation], but it was noble and stirring and would bring in a lot of votes.”
― Mark Clifton, They'd Rather Be Right

“objective physical science methodology will never permit us to know a man; that such methodology limits us merely to knowing about a man.”
― Mark Clifton, The Second Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

“People will tie in with a fanatic if for no other reason than to break the monotony of their lives.”
― Mark Clifton, They'd Rather Be Right

“Perhaps, without realizing it, I actually had developed –well, if not an open mind, one which was at least cracked.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“A little bit of semantics twisting will get him followers by the millions. People will tie in with a fanatic if for no other reason than to break the monotony of their lives.”
― Mark Clifton, The Second Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

“Out of the montage of accusations and sly traps written in their collective expressions, one face stood out clearly from all the rest. What was the remark the man had made? Oh, yes, he remembered it now. “I am completely impartial, Dr. Billings,” the man had said. “I merely see to it that you teachers say nothing which might threaten our freedom of speech!”
― Mark Clifton, Hide! Hide! Witch!

“But there were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals issue—when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“First rule: We cannot harm intelligent life." "First question: How do we know we've found some?”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a summer shower, that might be magnified into a flood. EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally to COLONY WIPED OUT. That there was no proof of loss or destruction bothered no one in journalism.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“those folks might differ in some opinions, but humans always stood ready to help one another in distress, differences forgotten.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“It provides excuse for anything we may want to do in the destruction of others. We know it well. We should. We've had plenty of experience with it. We know it in all its stages of progression. We know it is a contagion and an addiction. We know it to be worse than any narcotic habit, for it can only feed upon forbidding and condemning others in ever increasing doses, to increase its own self-approval.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“There are those who milk, and those born to be milked; those who slaughter, and those who line up for the slaughtering.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“they relaxed before going to bed –single beds, of course, installed under the strict supervision of F.B.I. who were doing their best to make sure these handsome, single men from the stars indulged in no nonconformist sex behavior while guests of this Earth and subject to association with government officials.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“Their faces were designed to reflect the morning after the night before.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“There was no real animosity in his voice or his mind. It was the simple desire to obstruct found in everyone, and often expressed where there is no fear of retaliation.”
― Mark Clifton, They'd Rather Be Right

“Apparently my real mission was to be concealed. Ostensibly my job was to train extraterrestrials vocationally and put them to work in self-respecting employment –if we ever did discover any. My real mission, of course, was to drive them away before anybody found out they'd been here;”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“Precedent for one person's being different from another person, and therefore not having the same rights. Wow! Nineteen sixty here we come, right back where we started from! Make that eighteen sixty. Or seventeen, or sixteen, or any goddam century you want to name.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“Of course science fiction was now old enough, traditional enough, and therefore respectable enough that it was no longer scorned by the literary elite. And, seventy-eighty years later, Dr. Gaffee had learned, in his early research, what the pioneer writers and fans of that literature had known all along; that not only did it provide the power thrust to enable the mind to take off and soar into the unknown geographies of undiscovered mental continents, but that it was virtually the only way this could be done.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“It was always difficult to maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in such a position.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“No one thought it curious they weren't trying to get the information from source for everyone in journalism understands the importance lies in what the competition is going to say, not in what happened.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“They knew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation to arise, so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some law which seemed only to apply to this given condition but in actuality broadened police powers over a wide area of man's actions.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“They knew that the police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always and ever to bring every phase of human activity under their control.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“My gorge rose in revulsion, I fought for detachment; to still my atavistic fears; to remind myself that man had created the dread forces of Evil out of his own sick imaginings, even as he had created the forces of Good out of his noble aspirations. It did no good. This was materialization of something basically, inherently Evil, no sickness of the imagination.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“First rule of government of the people, by the people, for the people: Never tell the people!”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“The Starmen weren't men, well, not human men, anyhow. Wow! Suppose that goddam Supreme Court had to distinguish between a man's rights, and a –well, whatever they were. What a precedent that one would set. Because then that precedent could be used to settle other questions, such as, well, such as –is a Negro really a man? Wow!”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“I knew how little it took to turn an overwrought, tense collection of individuals into a ravening mob, all acting in one accord of insane fury, possessed by a superentity created through interaction and feedback of emotions, given brief life of uncalculated power, taking possession of the individuals, turning them into body cells of the entity, playing out the tragic role before the individual mind could recoil in horror from its acts, shatter the group accord and destroy the entity –after the deed had been done.”
― Mark Clifton, When They Come From Space

“In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a summer shower, that might be magnified into a flood. EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally to COLONY WIPED OUT.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“no real or imagined scandals seemed of such journalistic stature as to work the public into a frenzy of intolerance for one another's aberrations.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“Ten. Losing seasons—whether in baseball or in ministry—tend to devour leaders.”
― Mark Clifton, Reclaiming Glory: Creating a Gospel Legacy throughout North America