Jack Vance Quotes

“I learned a great deal,” said Beran. “And then I lost all heart for further learning.”
Palafox’s eyes glinted. “Education is not achieved through the heart—it is a systematization of the mental processes.”
“But I am something other than a mental process,” said Beran. “I am a man. I must reckon with the whole of myself.”

“It’s not a knack at all,” said Jantiff. “I’ve had to practice for years.”
Tanzel said brightly: “Isn’t it elitism when someone tries to do something better can everyone else?”

The history of man is a compendium of such evil. We are an evolutionary product, descendants of predators. A few synthetic foods aside, every morsel eaten by man is taken from another living thing. We are intended for murder; we kill to exist!

“I have heard your name mentioned.”
“Probably as a high-flying free-wheeling financial hell-raiser.”
“I believe the term ‘unscrupulous blackguard’ was used,” said Ridolph.

“Well then, what of Adam Reith the erudite ethnologist? What theosophical insights can he contribute?”
“None,” said Reith. “Very few, at any rate. It occurs to me that the man and his religion are one and the same thing. The unknown exists. Each man projects on the blankness the shape of his own particular world-view. He endows his creation with his personal volitions and attitudes. The religious man stating his case is in essence explaining himself. When a fanatic is contradicted he feels a threat to his own existence; he reacts violently.”
“Interesting!” declared the fat merchant. “And the atheist?”
“He projects no image upon the blank whatever. The cosmic mysteries he accepts as things in themselves; he feels no need to hang a more or less human mask upon them. Otherwise, the correlation between a man and the shape into which he molds the unknown for greater ease of manipulation is exact.”

When self-willed microunits combine to form and sustain a durable macrounit, certain freedoms of action are curtailed.
This is the basic process of Organization.
The more numerous and erratic the microunits, the more complex must be the structure and function of the macrounit—hence the more pervasive and restricting the details of Organization.

I don’t care a fig whether or not you are offended.

Shimrod said: “Once I thought of you as a child in a woman’s body.”
Melancthe smiled a cool smile. “And now?”
“The child seems to have wandered away.”

Enough of this intolerable inanity! I propose that such loquacity passes beyond the scope of nuisance and over the verge of turpitude.

I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.

All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three.

“Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. “We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown.”

Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding?

My own concepts in this regard are easy and clear, and I am sure that the word “simplistic” will be used by my critics. These folk are callow and turgid of intellect; I am reassured by their howls and yelps.

Yes, I realize that I see but a semblance, but so do you, and who is to say which is real?