Mel > Mel's Quotes

“Passing in any crowd are secret people whose hidden response to beauty is the desire to tear it into bleeding meat.”
― James Tiptree Jr.

“Certainly my inner world will never be a peaceful place of bloom; it will have some peace, and occasional riots of bloom, but always a little fight going on too. There is no way I can be peacefully happy in this society and in this skin. I am committed to Uneasy Street. I like it; it is my idea that this street leads to the future, and that I am being true to a way of life which is not here yet, but is more real than what is here.”
― James Tiptree Jr.

“Man is an animal whose dreams come true and kill him.”
― James Tiptree Jr., Her Smoke Rose Up Forever

“I have a cold mind and a warm heart, whereas most people have cold, troubled hearts and warm, muggy minds, which they mistake for sincere feelings.”
― James Tiptree Jr.

“To grow up as a “girl” is to be nearly fatally spoiled, deformed, confused, and terrified; to be responded to with falsities, to be reacted to as nothing or as a thing—and nearly to become that thing.”
― James Tiptree Jr.

“I love the alien in people, god I love the wildness, the wit, the lightning of the Other mind. A kind of sex-in-the-head, you know it's a rather Victorian affliction. Something to do with communication. I have had moments of communication with people, often totally unsuitable people, which had a truly unholy intensity... A sort of orgasmic meaningfulness and clarity, you know, all the old romantic stuff - two strangers stop and suddenly exchange glimpses of reality before moving on into the mists.”
― James Tiptree Jr.

“Consider how odd it would be if all we knew about elephants had been written by elephants. Would we recognize one? What elephant author would describe--or perhaps even perceive--the features which are common to all elephants? We would find ourselves detecting these from indirect clues; for instance, elephant-naturalists would surely tell us that all other animals suffer from noselessness, which obliges them to use their paws in an unnatural way. [...]So when the human male describes his world he maps its distances from his unspoken natural center of reference, himself.”
― Alice B Sheldon

“This was just too improbable, a man who didn’t think he deserved a prize.”
― Julie Phillips, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon

“I wish I could understand the window in your soul. Mine has none such, but I believe in others'. It is as though mine says to me, You alone are damned. To you the daylight, to you the reality of what appears; for you the dead of Carthage will be dead forever, the pain everywhere the overmastering reality, the skull beneath the fairest skin always visible beneath the blue-veined temples, in the laughing teeth. To you, the lone and level sands covering human endeavor, the ephemerality of laughter. ... Only for others, the reality of human life, the game worthwhile as it is being played. Only for others, any kind of hope. Only for others, the window in the closed room.--or closed galaxy, it makes no difference.”
― James Tiptree Jr.

“A woman writing of the joy and terror of furious combat, or of the lust of torture and killing, or of the violent forms of evil--isn’t taken quite seriously. Because women aren't as capable of violent physical assault--not to speak of rape--as men are[...] So when one who writes about serious, violent evil turns out to be female, some readers may feel cheated--particularly if an action scene has stirred them. Now it all seems flat, even false--'What the hell does she know about real fighting?”
― James Tiptree Jr., Meet Me At Infinity: The Uncollected Tiptree: Fiction and Nonfiction

“I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

“One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.

[Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19]”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 3001: The Final Odyssey

“Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“One of the greatest tragedies in mankind's entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Rama II

“What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

“It may be that our role on this planet
is not to worship God--but to create him.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space

“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“After their encounter on the approach to Jupiter, there would aways be a secret bond between them---not of love, but of tenderness, which is often more enduring.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

“No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End