Top 15 James Blish Quotes

No exercise of will can make any of us other than what we are, or more than marginally better than who we are.

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 cannot count upon the secret being kept. It’s a fact of nature, and as somebody or other remarked long ago, Nature is a blabbermouth; ask the right question, and you’ll always get the answer.

I’ve already given you the whole explanation of how that came about. It happened because it was going to happen. All other explanations for anything are superfluous. All other explanations for anything.

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.

"Something tells me that this isn't going to be as simple as it looks."
"What is?" Wald said, raising his eyebrows.
"Nothing, of course. But hope springs eternal in the human spleen.

The motto of the bureau," Weinbaum said, "is, 'sometimes something works.'

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

He was getting to be a little old for combat or for princesses, but what was worse, he had become a lot more cynical without having become even slightly the wiser.

It is written:
That given any one of a thousand million possible paths, life will take them all;
That worlds which will support life will give birth to it;
That worlds which cannot support intelligent life will be colonized;
And that where both can take place, both will take place.
It is written that this is what the vast, unknowing interstellar stage is for: To be given consciousness and purpose while its gift of existence lasts.
It is written:
That this is a random process;
That in the end all will be darkness and silence again;
But that while it lasts, life spreads through it, to make it aware of its own vastness and beauty, which otherwise it can never have known.
This is a gift; but the Giver is unknown.
That too is written.

One death is as good as another, if death is what you are courting.

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

Perhaps indeed Jehovah is not dead,
But mere retir’d, withdrawn or otherwise
Contracted hath, as Zohar subtle saith,
His Essence Infinite; and, Epicurean, waits
The outcome vast with vast indifference.

One thing you learn fast in the munitions business is that it’s a very good idea to stay off battlefields.

This senseless advance of expensively trained and equipped men to certain and complete slaughter—men who as usual not only had no idea of what they were dying for, but had been actively misled about it—made about as much military sense as the Siege of Sevastopol or the Battle of the Marne. Certainly it was spectacular, but intellectually it was not even very interesting.