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Random quote: "Truly life is wasted on the living..." - Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
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Administrator"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
Administrator"We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man; we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space." - H.G. Wells
Administrator"It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety." - Isaac Asimov - Foundation
Administrator"Speak up, destiny, speak up! Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it's not decades away; it's right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe." - Walter M. Miller, Jr. - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Administrator"Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." - J.R.R. Tolkien - Fellowship of the Ring
Administrator"The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving paradise in this life--we went soft, we lost our edge." Frank Herbert - Dune
Administrator"Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect all who seek it." - Frank Herbert - Chapterhouse Dune
Administrator"A world is supported by four things. The learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling." - Frank Herbert - Dune
Administrator"If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?" - Lois McMaster Bujold - Diplomatic Immunity
Administrator"Conformity and rebellion...both ways are simple-minded--they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity." - Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age
Administrator"It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them...At least he who reaches will get a good stretch, a good view, and perhaps even a low-hanging apple for his efforts." - R.A. Salvatore - Sojourn
Administrator"Luck is simply the advantage a true warrior gains in executing the correct course of action." - R.A. Salvatore - The Halfling's Gem
Administrator"There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias." - Elizabeth Moon - The Speed of Dark
Administrator"Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore." - Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Administrator"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." - Jack Handey - Deep Thoughts
The Shadow"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect." - Steven Wright
Administrator"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." - Isaac Asimov
Administrator"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand." - Kurt Vonnegut
Administrator"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"Indecision may or may not be my problem." - Jimmy Buffett
Administrator"It's a dangerous business going out your front door." - J.R.R. Tolkien
Administrator"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence." - J.R.R. Tolkien
Administrator"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut
Administrator"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it." - Terry Pratchett
Administrator"The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke
Administrator"I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out." - Steven Wright
Administrator"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane." - Philip K. Dick
Administrator"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Administrator"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor." - Neil Gaiman
Administrator"What power would Hell have if those imprisoned there were not able to dream of Heaven?" - Neil Gaiman
Administrator"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." - William Gibson
Administrator"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort." - Herm Albright
Administrator"We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong." - Sir Arthur Eddington
Administrator"The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it." - Frank Herbert
Administrator"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." - Frank Herbert, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, "Dune"
Administrator"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic." - Frank Herbert
Administrator"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience." - Frank Herbert, Dune (Reverend Mother Mohiam)
Administrator"Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination." - Bertrand Russell
Administrator"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale." - Arthur C. Clarke
Administrator"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Administrator"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke
Administrator"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." - Kurt Vonnegut
Administrator"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)" - Ambrose Bierce
Administrator"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
Administrator"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." - Groucho Marx
Administrator"Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest." - Isaac Asimov
Administrator"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time." - George Orwell
Administrator"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - George Orwell
Administrator"He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action." - Frank Herbert
Administrator"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - JRR Tolkien
Administrator"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" - Henry Ward Beecher
Administrator"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits." - Robert A. Heinlein
kayphere"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." - Anonymous
Administrator"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." - Albert Einstein
Administrator"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
Administrator"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein
Administrator"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve." - J.R.R. Tolkien
Administrator"As long as I'm dealing in honesty, I may as well admit that I have been more influenced (as a person) by my childhood readings of Tolkien and Lewis than I have been by any philosophers I read in college and grad school. The events and characters in Narnia and Middle Earth shaped my ideals, my dreams, my goals. Kant just annoyed me." - N.D. Wilson
Administrator"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something." - Robert A. Heinlein
Administrator"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards." - Robert A. Heinlein
Administrator"There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe." - Robert A. Heinlein
Administrator"Free online films can't all be 'Dr. Horrible,' but they can be horrible." - Jonathan McDonald
AdministratorReal luxury is time and opportunity to read for pleasure. - Jane Brody
Administrator"Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible." - Stanislaw Lem
Administrator"Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book." - Edward Gibbon
Administrator"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it." - Terry Pratchett
Administrator"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life." - Terry Pratchett
Administrator"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Terry Pratchett
Administrator"Revolutions always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions." - Terry Pratchett
Administrator"Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more." - Terry Pratchett
Administrator"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance." - Ray Bradbury
Administrator"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe." - Ray Bradbury
Administrator"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams
Administrator"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated." - Poul Anderson
Administrator"Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad." - Diogenes the Cynic
Administrator"Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires." ~ Lazarus Long - Robert A. Heinlein
Administrator"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be." - Isaac Asimov
christopherw277"Heroes are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials, or none at all." - Gerald White Johnson
Administrator"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." - Harlan Ellison
Administrator"Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment." - Harlan Ellison (Paladin of the Lost Hour)
Administrator"At the present rate of progress, it is almost impossible to imagine any technical feat that cannot be achieved - if it can be achieved at all - within the next few hundred years." - Arthur C. Clarke
Administrator"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." - Umberto Eco
Administrator"Sometimes people are layered like that. There's something totally different underneath than what's on the surface. But sometimes, there's a third, even deeper level, and that one is the same as the top surface one. Like with pie." ~ Dr. Horrible - Joss Whedon et al.
whargoul"I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger." - unknown
Administrator"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives." - Lois McMaster Bujold
Administrator"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." - Sir Arthur Eddington
Administrator"We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong." - Sir Arthur Eddington
Administrator"Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers." - Sir Arthur Eddington
Administrator"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." - George Orwell
Administrator"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - George Orwell
Administrator"War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent." - George Orwell
whargoul"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'" - Isaac Asimov
Administrator"Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win." - Robert A. Heinlein
Administrator"There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read." - G. K. Chesterton
Administrator"Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful." - Kurt Vonnegut
Administrator"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." - Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)
Administrator"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive." - Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)
Administrator"If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals it is the modern strengthening of minor morals." - Poul Anderson (The Boat of a Million Years)
Administrator"The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive." - John Sladek
Administrator"The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it." - H.G. Wells
Administrator"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan
Administrator"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality." - Carl Sagan
Administrator"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." - Jerry Seinfeld
Somethingclever"...a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom." - Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End)
Emil"You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city...you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes." - Samuel R. Delaney (Dhalgren)
Emil"The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools." - Larry Niven (Ringworld)
Emil"Belief is the wound that knowledge heals." - Ursula K. Le Guin (The Telling)
Emil"There's no such thing as writing about the future. The future hasn't happened yet." - Joe Haldeman
Emil"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to beor to be indistinguishable fromself-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time." - Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
Emil"So much technology, so little talent." - Vernor Vinge (Rainbow's End)
Emil"Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful." - Dan Simmons (Hyperion)
Emil"I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself. " - Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game)
Emil"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding... " - William Gibson (Neuromancer)
Emil"Listen, my dear Cors, why don't you forgive God for allowing pain? If He didn't allow it, human courage, bravery, nobility, and self-sacrifice would all be meaningless things." - Walter M. Miller, Jr. (A Canticle for Leibowitz)
Emil"There is no God and we are his prophets." Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
Emil"Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire." - Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
Emil"He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke." - Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
Emil"The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all." - Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
Emil"By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp." - Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
Emil"Carry the fire." - Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
Emil"Where men can't live gods fare no better." - Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
Administrator"After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'" - William S. Burroughs
Emil"Truly life is wasted on the living..." - Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
Emil"Kiss a lover Dance a measure, Find your name And Buried treasure..." - Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
Emil"Face your life It's pain, its pleasure, Leave no path untaken" - Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book)
gallyangel"The path of life can narrow until only one option out of the myriad of possibilities exists. An entire race can hinge at such a moment." - Glenn Hough (970 A.D.S.)
gallyangelI was a despicable person, doing despicable things, in a despicable world. I thought you wouldn't have noticed me at all. - Glenn Hough (970 A.D.S.)
gallyangelOur viciousness? We've been within spitting distance of extinction since our creation. What do you expect? - Glenn Hough (970 A.D.S.)
gallyangelThe report of my death was an exaggeration. - Mark Twain
gallyangelTo rule based on an assault upon an individual's conscience is to display a profound ignorance. And the rule of the ignorant is suicide. - Glenn Hough (970 A.D.S.)
gallyangelEach of us holds within us the power to destroy something important. - Project Itoh (Harmony)
gallyangelIt is over life, throughout its unfolding, that power establishes its dominion; death is power's limit, the moment that escapes it; death becomes the most secret aspect of existence, the most private. - Michel Foucault
gallyangelBelief in the lie is the life of the lie. - Ursula Le Guin (Powers)
gallyangelThe silence of the world could not rein back it's greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won. - Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
Administrator"I'm not a yellow card. I don't have anything to fear." Hock Seng makes himself smile in return, thinking that she does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field. - The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
WintermuteBut I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn. - Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
gallyangelTo grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light! - H. G. Wells (The Food Of The Gods)
Exarcheian"Beware of the brains you invade..." - Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. (Burton & Swinburne in The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder)
Rhondak101"As is well known, all collectors are prepared to steal or murder if it is a question of getting another piece for their collection; but this does not lower their moral character in the least." Karel Capek, The War with the Newts
gallyangelWhy, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. - Robert Silverberg (Dying Inside)
gallyangelThe most dangerous condition for a man or a nation is when his intellectual side is more developed than his spiritual. Is that not exactly the condition of the world today? - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Land of Mist)
Rhondak101"HISTORY--Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view." John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
Rhondak101People who hate in concrete terms are dangerous. People who manage to hate only in abstracts are the ones worth having for your friends. John Brunner, Stand on Zanizbar
Rhondak101You know Chad's definition of the New Poor? People who are too far behind with time-payments on next year's new model to make the downpayment on the one for the year after. John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
Rhondak101History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells. Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
gallyangelI will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. I resign. - Number 6 (The Prisoner)
gallyangelEarth is the cradle of the mind-but you cannot live in the cradle forever. - Tsiolkovsky
Scott Laz"A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response." - William Gibson, Distrust That Particular Flavor
Scott Laz"I read, and, in reading, lifted the Curtains of the Impossible, that blind the mind, and looked out into the unknown." -- William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland
EngelbrechtNormal is a bitter pill that we rail against. - Caitlin R. Kiernan (The Drowning Girl)
gallyangelHaven't you ever been in a fairy tale before? - Peter Beagle (The Last Unicorn)
EngelbrechtI can bear anything as long as there are books. - Jo Walton (Among Others)
whargoulGrrr whhh aaaah grrr whaa grr aaaaahggr waah - Hulk
icowrich"Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." - G. K. Chesterton
gallyangelEven a poet cannot get everything right. - Ursula K. Le Guin (Lavinia)
jfrantz"Those who build walls are their own prisoners" Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed
EngelbrechtIf you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. - Albert Einstein
gallyangelWhen it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like. - Julian Assange
Scott LazI want to know why a fire glows, and why flame dust kills. I want my children or theirs...to know what makes this radio work,...and someday this rocket. I want to know much--more than I can learn, no doubt; but if I can start my people learning for themselves... -- Hal Clement (Mission of Gravity)
CrowgirlYou must believe the impossible is merely preposterous. - Futurama
jfrantzI don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement. Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
Scott LazThe historic task of science fiction is to develop a global consciousness -- Margaret St. Clair, "Thoughts from My Seventies"
gallyangel"No matter what they may have done in life, they must have started out innocent, as do we all, so don't be too hard on them. It was your fault for making them Human, which was a dirty trick. If you are out there somewhere, you ought to be ashamed of yourself." Valiha's remarks over 13 dead humans - John Varley (Demon)
gallyangelAnd you and I have good enough minds to know how very limited and finite they really are. The naked intellect is an extraordinarily inaccurate instrument. - Madeleine L'Engle (A Wind in the Door)
wecowoIf the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. - Mary Shelly, (Frankenstein)
wecowoThe trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. - Paul Valery
wecowoWhy make plans? The sun might well go out tomorrow. - Jack Vance, (Tales of the Dying Earth)
wecowoI become drunk as circumstances dictate. - Jack Vance, (Tales of the Dying Earth)
wecowoWhen I looked around, I saw and heard none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? - Mary Shelly, (Frankenstein)
icowrich"History often resembles myth, because they are both ultimately of the same stuff. -J.R.R. Tolkien
harpo64"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" Isaac Asimov, (Foundation)
Scott LazIf you deny mystery--even in the guise of death--then you deny life, and you will walk like a ghost through your days, never knowing the secrets of the extremes. The deep sorrows, the absolute joys. -- Lucius Shepard ("The Jaguar Hunter")
Scott LazTake it from somebody who has been around for a million years: When you get right down to it, food is practically the whole story every time. -- Kurt Vonnegut (Galapagos)
Scott LazIt makes all the difference whether one sees darkness through the light, or brightness through the shadows -- David Lindsay (A Voyage to Arcturus)
Scott LazSomeday my father would stop writing science fiction, and write something a whole lot of people wanted to read instead. -- Leon, son of Kilgore Trout, in Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos
gallyangelLiteracy is so you can read the operating instructions. -- Ursula Le Guin's assessment of the value of literacy in America. (The Wave in the Mind)
gallyangelThe living tongue that tells the word, the living ear that hears it, bind and bond us in the communion we long for in the silence of our inner solitude. -- Ursula Le Guin (The Wave in the Mind)
gallyangelWe will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable. -- Ursula Le Guin (The Wave in the Mind)
pauljamesBut since you have put a question to me, I can ask one in return. Are you sure - really sure - you know who told you this story? - Peter Straub (Mr X)
whargoulLet's go get drunk. And piss on our enemies from a great height. -- Richard Kadrey (Sandman Slim)
gallyangelWhen knowledge becomes formulated into a science, then it does take on a life of it's own, often alien to the human spirit that conceived it. -- Brian Aldiss (Frankenstein Unbound)
Rhondak101Your mind's always juggling, isn't it?--mirrors, torches, plates. Ray Bradbury (The Fire Balloons)
Rhondak101What's a hero? Some big muscular guy with a sword? Or some normal person who takes a swing for the greater good, despite everything? Mark Chadbourn (World's End)
Rhondak101Besides, when you say you're a feminist it annoys the bigots and the old farts and the prissy ladies so much, it's kind of irresistible. - Ursula K. Le Guin (Interview)
EngelbrechtT. H. White taught me that writing can be more exuberant than is strictly tastful. - Karen Joy Fowler (interview in The Science of Herself)
EngelbrechtIn the case of romances what I found distressing was not so much that they are read only by women, but that these are the books containing the sentences that most rapidy make me want to vomit. - Nomi Szcsi (The Finno-Ugrian Vampire)
Engelbrecht'Where's Grampa?' 'Now that I have chopped him up and passed him through the electric meat grinder at maximum, he is no longer oppressed by the burden of living.'- Noemi Szcsi (The Finno-Ugrian Vampire)
EngelbrechtThousands of people know my flannel knickers, and though I know this may seem flirtatious, it is not. I am a saint. - Leonora Carrington (My Flannel Knickers)
EngelbrechtThe beginning is so very far away, I thought, but the end is always near. That's what time means, to humans. - Leena Krohn (Datura (or, A Delusion We All See))
EngelbrechtEven though they had no interest in the way humans measured time or how the planets affected their actions, the robots knew Mercury retrograde was a point of crisis for them, inaugurating a period of voluptuous activity, one that would grow more and more intense as the days grew shorter. - Kathryn Davis (Duplex)
EngelbrechtMy pass had disappeared. Not that I believed for a moment that this was an accident; in fact, I had suspected for some time now that the Cosmic Command, obviously no longer able to supervise every assignment on an individual basis when there were literally trillions of matters in its charge, had switched over to a random system. The assumption would be that every document, circulating endlessly from desk to desk, must eventually hit upon the right one. A time-consuming procedure, perhaps, but one that would never fail. The Universe itself operated on the same principle. And for an institution as everlasting as the Universe certainly our Building was such an institution the speed at which these meanderings and perturbations took place was of no consequence. - Stanislaw Lem (Memoirs Found in a Bathtub)
EngelbrechtA smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. - Stanislaw Lem (The Futurological Congress)
EngelbrechtEven a fool could see that one didn't need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself; the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely. - Stanislaw Lem (Peace on Earth)
EngelbrechtIt was quite dark when he went by the towers of Tor, where archers shoot ivory arrows at strangers lest any foreigner should alter their laws, which are bad, but not to be altered by mere aliens. - Lord Dunsany (Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller)
EngelbrechtComedy is tragedy that happens to other people. - Angela Carter (Wise Children)
EngelbrechtThe law is where reality goes to die. - Steve Aylett (The Crime Studio)
Rhondak101No one should let yesterday use up too much of today. Easy to say, hard to live. Andrea Hairston, Redwood and Wildfire
Rhondak101Race is how the world see you, ethnicity is how you see yourself (sic). Andrea Hairston (Mindscape)
Rhondak101Orito pictures the human mind as a loom that weaves disparate threads of belief, memory, and narrative into an entity whose common name is Self, and which sometimes calls itself Perception. David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
gallyangelInside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out. - Terry Pratchett (The Light Fantastic)
EngelbrechtAn equation is a prophecy that always comes true. - Catherynne M. Valente (The Boy Who Lost Fairyland)
Badseedgirl"Even a paranoid clock is being followed twice a day." - Dan Wells, Partials (Owen Tovar)
gallyangelThings that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact. - Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters)
devilinlawFear and anger, Yoda had often warned him, were slaves to the dark side. Vaguely, Luke wondered which side curiosity served. - Timothy Zahn (Heir to the Empire)
devilinlawI remember an aunt saying sagely, "The good die young." Not exactly a motivation to behave yourself. - Connie Willis
devilinlawWe often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because "two" is "one and one." We forget that we have still to make a study of "and." - Sir Arthur Eddington
devilinlaw"It is often very useful for others to think you less intelligent than you are," Benedict said, his tone amused. "It works particularly well against those who aren't as intelligent as you in the first place." - Jim Butcher (The Aeronaut's Windlass)
gallyangelIn the deep silence of midnight, the universe revealed itself to its listeners as a vast desolation. - Cixin Liu (The Three-Body Problem)
EngelbrechtSometimes a mad wife may slap the baglady to help it breed and then cut the unbiblical corn as a moral admonition. The play centre is a rich source of nude miscreants and many animals eat it. - Richard Littler (Discovering Scarfolk)
gallyangelI cannot live without books. - Thomas Jefferson, 1815
gallyangelA single pair of panties had shaken me so profoundly that I was ultimately moved to contribute to the circulation of currency. - Nisioisin (Kizumonogatari)
gallyangelAnyhow it's perfectly natural! If savages had the same tastes as aristocrats, how could we tell 'em apart? - Jules Verne (Five Weeks in a Balloon)
gallyangelTo be a Human being of any kind is a hard enough lot, and unpleasant and disreputable in the best of circumstances. - Mark Twain (Autobiography of Mark Twain Vol. 2)
EngelbrechtIt's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button. - John Brunner ( Stand on Zanzibar)
gallyangel...the enigmatic presence of the human mind winks back from the dark. -- Whitley Strieber (Communion)
gallyangelAt that moment, I got the impression of vast stretches of time, and how hard it was to maintain environmental balance, how you must waste nothing if you expect to survive long enough to matter. -- Whitley Strieber (The Super Natural)
gallyangelYou can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. -- C.S. Lewis
JohnBemBeware of literature.--Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)
gallyangelAny sufficiently profound magical event is indistinguishable from technology. (Reverse of Clarke's third Law) -- Jeffrey Kripal (The Super Natural)
gallyangelJust the knowledge that a good book is waiting at the end of a long day invariably makes the day happier. -- Martha Gullik
EngelbrechtThe advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology. - J. G. Ballard
gallyangelIt is my conviction that the human race is no proper target for harsh words and bitter criticisms, and that the only justifiable feeling towards it is compassion; it did not invent itself, and it had nothing to do with the planning of its weak and foolish character. -- Mark Twain (The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2)
gallyangelLiberty is a bitch that must be bedded on a mattress of corpses. -- Lily (Penny Dreadful)
gallyangelNo Single Thing Abides; But All Things Flow. -- Heraclitus
gallyangelFiction is the Lie that Tells the Truth, after all. -- Neil Gaiman (The View From the Cheap Seats)
CyBorgWords are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself. -- Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind)
gallyangelKinship is a bondage dragons feel more keenly than men. Their mothers-in-law live longer. -- Ka'a Orto'o, Gnomic Utterances, l iii -- Diana Wynne Jones (The Tough Guide to FantasyLand)
gallyangelSettle for what you can get, but first ask for the World. -- Ka'a Orto'o, Gnomic Utterances, C iv -- Diana Wynne Jones (The Tough Guide to FantasyLand)
gallyangel"Coincidences" as they're generally understood are a tricky affair--and, by and large, a product of malice. -- Deishu Kaiki -- Nisioisin (Nisemonogatari Part 02)
gallyangelA great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
gallyangel"How true is the saying that man was forced to work in order to escape the strain of having to think." -- Hercule Poirot -- Agatha Christie (Death on the Nile)
gallyangelWe are time. We are this Space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our Neurons. We are Memory. We are Nostalgia. We are Longing for a Future that will not Come. -- James Dator (Time and Future Studies)
EngelbrechtFinally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. - Cervantes (Don Quixote)
EngelbrechtNowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. - Oscar Wilde (The Picture Of Dorian Gray)
gallyangelGod is the Silence of the Universe, and Man is the Cry that Gives Meaning to the Silence. -- Jose Saramago
gallyangelAnyone can write a three-volume novel. All it takes is a complete ignorance of Art and Life. -- Oscar Wilde
gallyangelOne would be safe in wagering that any given public idea is erroneous, for it has been yielded to the clamor of the majority. -- Edgar Allan Poe
gallyangel"...we are all Libraries, because we keep what we read inside us like the best parts of ourselves." -- Alberto da Costa e Silva, quoted by Jose Saramago
gallyangelI have never thought about myself. Living or dying, they're the same thing. Because naturally, Life is not in this little body. What matters is the way in which we live and the message we leave behind. That is what survives us. That is immortality. -- Rita Levi-Montalcini
gallyangelWe are the memory we retain; without memory, we would not know who we are. -- Jose Saramago
gallyangelUtopia, I see, is only a home for those who have learnt the way. -- H.G. Wells (Men Like Gods)
gallyangelWhere there are lies there cannot be freedom. -- H.G. Wells (Men Like Gods)
gallyangelIgnorance is a powerful armor against the truth. -- B. Herbert & K.J. Anderson (Mentats of Dune)
gallyangel"America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe." -- Thomas Disch (The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of)
gallyangelMan does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him. -- Groucho Marx
gallyangelIt's wrong to think that the strong look down at the weak--in most cases, they aren't even looking at them in the first place. -- Hitagi Senjogahara -- NisiOisin (Owarimonogatari Part 2)
gallyangelWhat is a man, after all, but a corpse supported by a soul? -- David Case (The Third Grave)
gallyangelWe are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane. -- Kilgore Trout -- Kurt Vonnegut -- (Breakfast of Champions)
gallyangelThe chef end of all human knowledge...is to convince us of our utter ignorance. -- Jules Verne (Off on a Comet!)
lisagarrityNo live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. --Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)
gallyangel...which is better--to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one? -- Aldous Huxley (Island)
devilinlawSomething never to believe, right up there with "it tastes just like chicken" is "its not so bad." - Maureen F. McHugh (China Mountain Zhang)
daxxhSomebody once said that the library is actually the dominant life form on the planet. Humans simply exist as the reproductive means to achieve more libraries." - The Constant Rabbit, Jasper Fforde
lisagarrity...no crime is more horrendous in the eyes of the ignorant than the pursuit of knowledge.--, Leonard Wibberley (Beware of the Mouse)
lisagarrityDon't you know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretence; and that you are not to believe one word of it, even it it is true?--Charles Kingsley (The Water-Babies)
lisagarrityI had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.--Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan of the Apes)
Acknud"Swords, Lances, arrows, machine guns, and even high explosives have had far less power over the fates of nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea, and the yellow-fever mosquito. Civilizations have retreated from the plasmodium of malaria, and armies have crumbled into rabbles under the onslaught of cholera spirilla, or of dysentery and typhoid bacilli. Huge areas have been devastated by the trypanosome that travels on the wings of the tsetse fly, and generations have been harassed by the syphilis of a courtier. War and conquest and that herd existence which is an accompaniment of what we call civilization have merely set the stage for these more powerful agents of human tragedy." ― Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice and History
Acknud"I might have made a tactical error not going to a physician for 20 years. It was one of those phobias that didn't pay off." ― Warren Zevon
Acknud"The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you." ― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Acknud"There are more old drunks than there are old doctors." ― Willie Nelson
Acknud"So many books, so little time." ― Frank Zappa
Acknud"A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. " -- The Economist
Acknud"Out on the edge, you see all kinds of things you can?t see from the center. Big, undreamed-of things?the people on the edge see them first." Kurt Vonnegut
gallyangelAll the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk. -- Lemony Snicket
gallyangelWell-read people are less likely to be evil. -- Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope)
gallyangelNo reality has the power to dispel a dream. -- Lemony Snicket (When Did You See Her Last?)
Acknud"I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. The more you know, the less you need. From my feeble attempts at simplifying my own life I've learned enough to know that should we have to, or choose to, live more simply, it won't be an impoverished life but one richer in all the ways that really matter." Yvon Chouinard
Acknud"In the end, the only safe place to put a Trojan horse is outside your walls." Robert Harris

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