John Brunner Quotes

I love the place, and when they get love down to a bunch of factors you can analyse with a computer there’ll be nothing left of whatever makes it worth being human!

NEGRO Member of a subgroup of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamed—not by its residents—Africa. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis.

Rather painfully, we managed to digest Darwinian evolution so far as physical attributes were concerned within half a century of the initial controversy. (I say “we,” but if you’re a Bible-thumping fundamentalist I expect you at this point to take the book by one corner at arm’s length and ceremonially consign it to the place where you put most sensible ideas, along with everything else you decline to acknowledge the existence of, such as mainly shit.)

Who should know better than a cosmetician that human beings are less than rational creatures?

Ah, go to hell!"
"That's a remarkably Christian attitude, Donald. Both meaningless and barbaric.

What are you going to do for a career?"

Diverted from his orbit, Donald binked. "Well, something which uses up a minimum of my time, I imagine. So I can use the rest to mortar up the gaps in my education.

“I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said at length. The stench and crackle of burning boats was vivid to him.

COINCIDENCE You weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

Nothing short of religion could persuade a normal girl to make herself look so awful.

Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.

HIPCRIME You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope.

SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that’s processed by General Technics’ famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves.

I’m unattuned to happiness.

Did you never hear it said that what sets the genius apart from the plodder is the ability to see what happens and not what he expects to happen?

—Blessed are they who expect the worst, for they shall get it!