James Blish Quotes

We often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as n-dimensional—it’s like modern sex, any number may be played with.

We hear you, Father," he said surprisingly. "Yet we sense that though what you say is the truth, it is not the whole truth.

The first thing a psychologist learns is to keep her mouth shut around laymen.

The Venetians had never been more than formally and outwardly allegiant to the Church from at least their second treaty with Islam in the mid-fifteenth century. The highest pinnacle of their ethics was that of dealing fairly with each other, and since there was at the same time no sweeter music to Venetian ears than the scream of outrage from the outsider who had discovered too late that he had been cheated, this left them little that they felt they ought to say in the confessional. Most of them seem to regard the now obvious downfall of almost all of human civilization as a plot to divert the tourist trade to some other town—probably Istanbul, which they still referred to as Constantinople.

Of course a sense of guilt has a threshold; at a certain level of intensity it begins to confirm the habit-pattern rather than inhibit it—

High intelligence did not imply superior ability to come to terms with one’s social environment; indeed, there seemed to be some sort of rough correlation between high intelligence and the accumulation of aberrations.

“Your concept is a tremendous network of inconsistencies.”
“In what way?” the countess said, not very much interested.
“It seems to be based on reverence for the young, and an extremely patient and protective attitude toward their physical and mental welfare. Yet you make them live in these huge caves, utterly out of contact with the natural world, and you teach them to be afraid of death—which of course makes them a little insane, because there is nothing anybody can do about death. It is like teaching them to be afraid of the second law of thermodynamics, just because living matter sets that law aside for a very brief period.

In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!

He had been greatly talented once, but the loss of gifted experimenters to administrative posts was the curse of all research organizations.

But now the shots began—not many, but one shot is a fusillade if there have been no shots before.

It isn’t every composer who can premier his own last opera posthumously.

The technicians thought I was crazy. Now, five months later, I’ve proved it.

Martel still did not want to believe in it, but brute experience of it forced him to, whatever his preferences.

He wore the expression of a man who has heard all this before, and is not enjoying it any better the second time.

Actually, there are never motives behind actions. All actions are fixed. What we call motives evidently are rationalizations by the helpless observing consciousness, which is intelligent enough to smell an event coming—and, since it cannot avert the event, instead cooks up reasons for wanting it to happen...or ascribes it to the malice of God or man.