Robert Sheckley Quotes

Sarah Daubray was opposed to the entire Huntsworld philosophy. She had said on several occasion that only they poor should kill each other, since the wealthy were too valuable to sacrifice. Louvaine, however, was a liberal; he believed anyone had the right to kill anyone else, rich or poor.

But what's it all for?" "That's a stupid question. You might as well ask what reality is for." "Well...what is reality for?

I've never been able to understand that custom." "Not all customs have to have a reason.

One moment’s inattention, and the long expected death came at last—unexpectedly! In that agonized moment, sprawled helpless upon the uncaring ground, Polletti realized that no preparation for one’s own death is possible. Death has had too much experience in catching men off guard, in piercing their attitudes and reducing their poses.

I found her charming, went home and thought no more about her. Or, I thought I would think no more about her. But in the following days and nights her image remained obsessively before my eyes. My appetite fell off and I began sleeping badly. My computer checked out the relevant data and told me that I might conceivably be having a nervous breakdown; but the strongest inference was that I was in love.

Reilly was fairly sure he’d survive after death; but he saw no reason to take chances. Also, Mr. Kean says that the very rich, like the very religious, wouldn’t enjoy a hereafter filled with just anybody. They think that, by suitable rites and symbols, they can get into a more exclusive part of the hereafter.

This is a shopping mall," the Professor said. "At one time it was the central artifact of American life. It was to the Americans what the atrium was to the Romans or the plaza to the Spaniards, the great place of assemblage where one comes and ritually buys food and tries to arrange romantic assignations with attractive members of the preferred sex, whichever that might be.

Our Mr. Nye took you in, did he?" "I used to consider myself a judge of men," Karinovsky said. "And I could have sworn that this man a nothing—a nonentity—a thoroughly negligible person, and surely not a professional." "Nye's always been good at giving that impression," Baker said. "It's one of his little specialties.

Corpses shouldn’t be forced to answer questions. Death was man’s ancient privilege, his immemorial pact with life, granted to the slave as well as the noble. Death was man’s solace, and his right. But perhaps they had revoked that right; and now you couldn’t evade your responsibilities simply by being dead.

And do not think," Manisfree said, "that we absolve ourselves from blame in this situation. Although we teachers purport to know more than other men, we have usually chosen to remain aloof from public life. Practical, hardheaded men of the world have always frightened us; and those men, in their hardheaded way, have brought us to this." "Nor is aloofness our only failure," said Hanley of Anthropology. "Let me point out that we have taught—badly! Our few promising students became teachers, thus insulating themselves as we had. The rest of our students sat through the sleep-provoking drone of our lectures, eager only to depart and take their places in a mad world. We did not touch them, Joenes, we did not move them, and we did not teach them to think." "In fact," said Blake of Physics, "we did quite the contrary. We managed to equip most of our students with a definite hatred of thinking. They learned to view culture with the greatest suspicion, to ignore ethics, and to consider the sciences solely as a means of making money. This was our responsibility and our failure. The outcome of that failure is the world.

For the question inevitably remains, is Polletti’s admission of fear a magnificent conquest of the unconquerable, or a mere admission of the inadmissable?

Even rulers, notoriously the slowest of men to change, realized that something had to be done.

As a matter of fact, I am amazed at what has happened to science fiction in recent years. It has become a heavy academic field. And science fiction writers are being accorded a respect now, which I, as one of their peers and well-wishers, can only view with alarm and suspicion.
It seems like only yesterday, though it was in fact some 20 years ago, that all of us were writing pulp-action stories about a nebulous and ill-defined region that we called the future. Now our yarns are analysed in university classrooms for virtues we never suspected that they had. This is particularly true in America, the country that coined the word ‘overkill’ and then demonstrated its practical applications.

What is the purpose of being really intelligent if not to have the substance of what you want without mistaking it for the shadow?

"We have sympathized with the misplaced obsessive emotionality you have thrown into your delusional activities.”
“What do you mean, ‘delusional’? I know what I’m doing!”
The priest shook his head gently. “Whatever you think is wrong. I suppose you feel that you live your own life and strive to achieve your goals?”
“Well, of course!”
“But that is not the case at all. Actually, you have no independent life of your own. You do not live, you are lived! You are a completely automatic mechanism with a built-in I-reflex. Your life has no meaning, since you are not even a person. You are nothing more than a short-lived, inconsistent, and accidental collection of tendencies. Your only possible relevance is as the unwitting vehicle for the purpose of bringing forth the Avatar.”