Jack Vance Quotes

There is a dark side to humanity, which is like a stone pressed into the mold. The upper side, exposed to sun and air, is clean; tilt it and look below, at the muck and scurrying insects…

“My father says I have too much curiosity for my own good.”
Captain Henshaw chuckled. “He’s wrong there; too much curiosity never hurt anyone. When a boy has too little, that’s the time to start worrying.”

His decision was preordained, and derived from a perverse quirk in his mentality. At his deepest, most essential level, Hack knew himself for an insipid mediocrity, of no intellectual distinction and no particular competence in any direction. This was an insight so shocking that Hack never allowed it past the threshold of consciousness, and he conducted himself as if the reverse were true.

I often reflect upon the word “morality,” the most troublesome and confusing word of all.
There is no single or supreme morality; there are many, each defining the mode by which a system of entities optimally interacts.
The eminent entomologist Fabre, observing a mantis in the act of devouring its mate, exclaimed: “What an abominable custom!”
The ordinary man, during a day’s time, may be obliged to act by the terms of a half dozen different moralities. Some of these acts, appropriate at one moment, may the next moment be considered obscene or opprobrious in terms of another morality.
The person who, let us say, expects generosity from a bank, efficient flexibility from a government agency, open-mindedness from a religious institution will be disappointed. In each purview the notions represent immorality. The poor fool might as quickly discover love among the mantises.

“As always there is someone to hold a tight hand on the purse strings—usually the most affluent of the persons in authority.”
“This is how they become affluent.”

“What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking at you, and grateful for the opportunity.”

“Do you still think I’m crazy?”
Her glance went to his left shoulder. “I’m not well enough acquainted with the norm of your people to judge.”
Barch rose to his feet. He said thickly, “About ten more minutes of double talk, I actually would be crazy.”

Another busy day! So let’s to business. The clock moves forward; wasted time is life defeated!

Often their grievances were real; often they complained from sheer petulance.

It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.

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.

Never neglect the wonder of conscious existence, which too soon comes to an end!

“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.”

“We suspect that telepathy occurs instantaneously, if no faster—”
“How could anything be faster than instantaneously?” Margaret inquired.
“It could arrive before it started. In which case it’s called precognition.”
“Oh.”
“In any event it seems that thought is a different stuff from our usual matter, that it obeys different laws, acts through a different medium, in a different dimension set, in short, works through a different space—implying a different universe.”
Tarbert frowned. “You’re getting a little carried away; you’re using the word ‘thought’ rather too easily. After all, what is ‘thought’? So far as we know, it’s a word to describe a complex of electrical and chemical processes in our brains, these more elaborate, but intrinsically no more mysterious, than the operation of a computer. With all the goodwill and predisposition in the world, I can’t see how ‘thought’ can work metaphysical miracles.”

Control is necessary and even good—so long as I do the controlling.