Jack Vance Quotes

There’s ample human achievement in the universe, but not nearly enough beauty.

“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.”

Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.

The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?

Where cowards never venture, heroes find splendor.

So much existed: so much to be felt and seen and known! A single life was not enough…

It does no good to hurry here. In fact, it may even be against the law.

Your character, Apollon Zamp, is marred by a certain paltriness of spirit, a diffused universal distrust which I truly deplore.

The purportedly free was seldom as represented.

It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself.

“Crime occurs when the social structure is in itself inattentive and unwieldy,” she added offhandedly, “when the culture provides no scope for fulfillment.”

“Ridiculous situation,” he told himself in half-humorous self-contempt. “Six months ago I could think of nothing but travel to strange planets; now all I want is to go home to Earth.”

I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

“Are you yourself a Christian?”
The young man made a negative sign. “The concepts of religion baffle me.”
“This inscrutability is perhaps not unintentional,” said the ex-priest. “It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.”