Clifford D. Simak Quotes

Не, мислех си, не можеш да тръгнеш назад през праха на миналите години, през спомените, през събитията, през промените, настъпили в теб и нея, и да се опиташ да си върнеш някой ден или дори час. А и да ти се удаде това, няма да можеш да го очистиш от наслоилия се прах и никога не ще му върнеш предишния блясък. Но може би той никога не е бил бляскъв? Може би ти сам си го измислил такъв през дългите часове на самотата…
Нищо чудно, ако такъв светъл ден или час идва само веднъж в живота на човека, и то не на всеки човек. Възможно е да съществува закон, който да не позволява той да се повтори.

Boone gulped and swallowed. He spoke to The Hat. "You said the Highway to Eternity?" That is not what I said. I said the Highway of Eternity.
"Small difference," Boone told him. Not so small as you might think.

It seems to be a social axiom that as misery and privation increase for the many, the few rise ever higher in luxury and comfort, feeding on the misery. Not aware, perhaps, that they feed upon the misery, not with any wish of feeding on it—but they do.

That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself.

The party was beginning to get noisy—not boisterous, but noisy. It was beginning to acquire that stale air of futility to which, in the end, all parties must fall victim.

The situation outlined is immaterial to us. We could help humanity, but there is no reason that we should. Humanity is a transient factor and is none of our concern.

The once all-important thing had been buried by more than fifty years of other all-important matters.

Race preservation is a myth … a myth that you all have lived by — a sordid thing that has arisen out of your social structure. The race ends every day. When a man dies the race ends for him — so far as he’s concerned there is no longer any race.

He sat and watched them come and he thought of going in to get a rifle, but he didn’t stir from his seat upon the steps. The rifle would do no good, he told himself. It would be a senseless thing to get it; more than that, a senseless attitude. The least that man could do, he thought, was to meet these creatures of another world with clean and empty hands.

I have tried at times to place humans in perspective against the vastness of universal time and space. I have been concerned with where we, as a race, may be going and what may be our purpose in the universal scheme — if we have a purpose. In general, I believe we do, and perhaps an important one.

She was a creature of the woods and hills, of springtime flower and autumn flight of birds. She knew these things and lived with them and was, in some strange way, a specific part of them. She was one who dwelt apart in an old and lost apartment of the natural world. She occupied a place that Man long since had abandoned, if, in fact, he’d ever held it.

One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world’s tomorrow, another world’s today. And yesterday is tomorrow and tomorrow is the past. Except, there wasn’t any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one’s mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film that one could run backward and see what-once-had-been.

Our computers have no purpose. They are not alive.” “But if they were alive?” “Well, in that case, I suppose the ultimate purpose would be the storage of a universal data and its correlation.” “That perhaps is right,” they said. “We are living computers.” “Then there is no end for you. You’ll keep on forever.” “We are not sure,” they said. “But …” “Data,” they told me, pontifically, “is the means to one end only — arrival at the truth. Perhaps we do not need universal data to arrive at truth.

They sat for a moment, regarding one another; neither understanding. As if we were two aliens, thought Blaine. With viewpoints that did not come within a million miles of coinciding, and yet they both were men.

It was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than as a person.