John Brunner Quotes

Time entails memory, memory entails conscience, conscience entails thought for the future, which is itself implied by the existence of time.

"The gray-haired growser, who proved to be a lawyer, had made it clear how much he loathed the people who were, in his view, attempting to undermine the American Constitution by imposing a state religion — or possibly it was "religion state by state," for his argument grew more confused with each Martini he sank. At any rate he was noisily predicting that the result would be world domination by the Communist bloc because they would wind up with a monopoly of practical science while his own people would be reduced to praying, sticking pins in chance-opened Bibles, and casting lots to decide whose eldest son should be sacrificed to stave off disaster."

Governments rely on threat and trauma to survive. The easiest populace to rule is weak, poor, superstitious, preferably terrified of what tomorrow may bring,

a sneaking feeling that people are wrong when they say human beings can’t keep track of the world any more, we have to leave it up to the machines.

I don’t think of my fellow men as dangerous. I think of them as capable of occasional dangerous mistakes.

the plight of being old: clearly recalling what it was like to act voluntarily and enjoy life as it came, now trapped in a frame that forbade anything except slow cautious movements

I like you very much as a person,” he said […] “I think I’m going to like you just as much as a woman.”
“I hope so,” she answered with equal formality. “We may have to go a lot of places together.

And how do men call you?” “I have many names, but one nature. You may call me Mazda, or anything you please.

our threshold of survival-prone behavior is so high it takes the prospect of total extermination to activate modes of placation and compromise, may there not be other processes, equally life-preserving, which can similarly be triggered off only at a far higher level of stimulus

(UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn’t manage. See also DISHONESTY, SNEAKY, UNDERHAND and JUST LUCKY I GUESS. — The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)

They sought security by piling up more and more irrelevant weapons.

You know, that’s what’s wrong with us on the public level. We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better. Our society is hurtling in free fall toward heaven knows where,

I see what Gene is driving at. To dream of changing the whole universe in accordance with a set of local preconceptions!...Oh, it's ridiculous!"
"A missionary," Gene repeated with a solemn nod. "By definition: a person who does without intending it more harm than good.

No faith can possibly suffice. It’s always undermined by ignorance.

If there is a hell, perhaps it consists in living up to all one’s promises.