Chris > Chris's Quotes

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#1

“Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.”
― Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth

tags: jack-vance, lodermulch, the-eyes-of-the-overworld

81 likes

#2

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”
― Virginia Woolf

tags: book-lovers, bookworms, heavenly-rewards, judgment, reading

974 likes

#3

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
― Philip K. Dick

tags: discourse, media, postmodern, power, science-fiction

843 likes

#4

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

tags: humor, novelist, science-fiction

2678 likes

#5

“The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools.”
― Larry Niven, Ringworld

tags: science-fiction, social-commentary

159 likes

#6

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

tags: choice, democracy, vote

126 likes

#7

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: rah

2040 likes

#8

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: choice, freedom, peace, war

1047 likes

#9

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

tags: condescending, income-tax, pay, taxes, tyranny

659 likes

#10

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

tags: manners, society

517 likes

#11

“Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: cult, danger, law, organized-religion, power, religion, sect, separation-of-church-and-state

429 likes

#12

“There is no such thing as "Just a cat.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

322 likes

#13

“The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

tags: absurd, adoration, creation, dream, evidence, expenses, fantasy, flattery, history, homo-sapiens, industry, lord, lord-god, petulant, prayers, preposterous, ruler, universe

362 likes

#14

“May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: benediction, blessing, life, love

357 likes

#15

“Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

429 likes

#16

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

3027 likes

#17

“Great is the power of steady misrepresentation”
― Charles Darwin

78 likes

#18

“What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously. "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.”
― Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth

83 likes

#19

“Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.”
― Jack Vance

tags: law

18 likes

#20

“The symbologist made a cryptic sign. "That remains to be seen, as the cat said who voided into the sugar bowl.”
― Jack Vance, The Palace of Love

10 likes

#21

“They speak very well of you".
- "They speak very well of everybody."
- "That so bad?"
- "Yes. It means you can´t trust them.”
― Iain M. Banks

tags: culture, cynical, dialogue, paranoid

166 likes

#22

“The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.”
― Iain M. Banks

tags: fiction, fiction-writing, writing, writing-craft

246 likes

#23

“The very concept of home has become tarnished, misty, elusive. As never before, we are living in a rootless age. So many of us are refugees, living out of suitcases, car trunks, cardboard boxes, desperate to go back to a home that no longer exists.”
― Chris Atack, The Hunger Star: Volume 2, The Wolfe Files

tags: homeless, refugee, rootless

5 likes

#24

“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.”
― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

tags: books, reading

2137 likes

#25

“Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.”
― Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days

1728 likes

#26

“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
― Jules Verne, A Journey to the Center of the Earth

tags: experience, failure, science

710 likes

#27

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: communist, conservative, control, controlled, democrat, fascist, liberal, political-tags, politics, populist, royalist

204 likes

#28

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

tags: freedom, law, morality, rules

2217 likes

#29

“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
― Robert A Heinlein

366 likes