Philip José Farmer Quotes

You prize rank too highly.

I, who hated the fat, smug, oily, stinking, ignorant, hypocritical, parasitical priests! And their unfeeling, merciless, cruel God!

He looks like he’d be a hellcat in a fight. Tom and I agreed that he was easily the best qualified. But he doesn’t know anything about books, and I need educated people around me. That may sound snobbish, but so what?

I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman.

TV, the worst thing that had happened to the twentieth century. After the atom bomb and overpopulation, of course.

The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in our lousy genes. Or in the failure of one’s conquest of one’s self.
The fault, dear Brutus, is in our fear of knowing ourselves.

What does that mean?"
"I don't know, but it sounds deep. I'll think up an explanation later.

Kazz thought that putting a lump on Oskas’ head was very funny. He would have considered it to be even a better joke if the chief had drowned. Yet, among his crewmates, he was as sociable, tender, and compassionate a man as anyone could ask for. He was a primitive, and all primitives, civilized or preliterate, were tribal people. Only the tribe consisted of human beings and were treated as such. All outside the tribe though some might be considered friends, were not quite human. Therefore, they did not have to be treated as if they were completely human.

Burton thought the man was crazy, though he was discreet enough not to say so. He and his crew had fallen into the hands of fanatics. Fortunately, the god had told Metusael that his worshipers must hurt no one unless it was in self-defense. However, he knew from experience that “self-defense” could mean whatever a person or group wanted it to mean.

People who believed in Him were deluded. The believers in God might be intelligent, but they were mentally benighted. The gears in that part of the brain which dealt with religion had been put into neutral, and they were spinning. Or the circuit of religion had been disconnected from the main circuit of the intellect.
That was a bad analogy. People use their intellect to justify the nonintellective, emotionally based phenomenon called religion. Often brilliantly. But, as far as she was concerned, uselessly.

You must not stereotype!" Cyrano cried. "And you are right," she said. "That is a feeling I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often…well, most people are living stereotypes, aren't they?

Then she warned her self—for the ten thousandth time?—that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment.

Nightmare in paradise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on make in a hell of it.

Many attributed this to a supernatural agency. Many more, among whom was Burton, did not think that there was any agency except an advanced science which accounted for this. There was no need to call in the supernatural. “No ghosts need apply,”—to quote the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Physical explanations sufficed.

Tell me, is this true or is it just one of those tales that people like to make up to worry others?