Jack Vance Quotes

Experience is the only source of wisdom: by which I mean, the competent conduct of life.

“The problems are large,” Reith agreed. “Still, assuming that your premise is correct—”
“‘Assume’? ‘Premise’?” demanded the fat woman in a shocked voice. ‘Revelation,’ rather.”
“Possibly so. But mysticism is not a practical approach to space travel.”

Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.

Kings, like children, tend to be opportunistic. Generosity only spoils them. They equate affability with weakness and hasten to exploit it.

Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth—and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort....We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolute—is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.

Gambling, in the ultimate study, stems from the passive, the submissive, the irresponsible in human nature; the gambler is one of an inferior lickspittle breed who turns himself belly-upward to the capricious deeds of Luck. Examine now the man of strength and action: he is never led by destiny. He drives on a decided course, manipulates the variables, and instead of submitting to the ordained shape of his life, creates a pattern to his own design.

Your doctrines are remarkable! As if I existed only to fulfill your cravings! Then, since I do not care to do so, the cosmos must be considered insane.

You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once.

The life we’ve been leading couldn’t last forever. It’s a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

The words must be spoken. The thoughts must be thought. The plans must be planned. The deeds must be done.

“I consider myself a fortunate men, more so than most. I have often wondered why it was given to me to live the life of Kyril Fabrache.”
“These reflections, at one time or another, have occurred to all of us,” said Ifness, “but unless we are agreed upon a religion of gradated reincarnation, the question is ingenuous.”

My brain, otherwise a sound instrument, has a serious defect—a hypertrophied lobe of curiosity.

“Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.”

Damned meddlers. It’s hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it’s just curiosity.

The repair system exists to keep the machinery operating but no provision had been made to repair the repair system.