Algis Budrys Quotes

Look, if I could guarantee what the results were going to be, I wouldn’t need a research program!

I had had a good life. A somewhat shorter one than I had anticipated, but I had had the money, I had had the girls, and nobody told me what to do. Is there, really, anything else? Are you sure?

He wondered, as he often had during his life, at people’s ability to think so intricately and to still be wrong.

I’m just an information processor like any other living thing.

There has to be an end somewhere, he thought. Each thing has to end, or there will never be any room for beginnings.

It’s good for us; hot breath on your heels is what keeps you on your toes.

Williamson threw his hands carefully up to heaven and snorted again. Apparently, everything Fay said served to confirm some judgment of mankind on his part.

Of course, you have to remind yourself that you might be seeing things that were never there. You might be maneuvering your memories to bring them into line with what you’d want them to be. You can’t be sure you’re not just daydreaming.

Only gods and television audiences see the pattern of human events.

Nobody liked him. Nobody loved him—and this bothered him. But everyone kowtowed to him, and that, it seems, was what he held most precious.

Man, is it wrong to miss being young and sure of yourself?

Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow was always better, for someone. The difficult task lay in ensuring that the someone was one of yours.

I don’t know...but then, if God had intended Man to think, He would have given him brains, I suppose.

Sentiment was the easy thing. But logic reminded a man that some people insisted on living their neighbor’s lives, that some people were offensive.
There were people with moral codes they clung to and lived by, people who worshiped in what they held to be the only orthodox way, people who clung to some idea—some rock on which their lives rested. Well and good. But if they tried to inflict these reforms on their neighbors, patience could only go so far, and the tolerance of fanaticism lasts just so long.

Smart isn't 'Can you do it, is it good to do?' Smart is 'Can you make 'em believe what you're doing is real?' And real is 'Can you get financing for it?'