Robert Sheckley Quotes

Nature also gives rain and drought, heat and cold; and thoughtfully ensures that the rain rots man’s food, the drought parches it, the heat scalds man’s body, and the cold freezes his limbs.
These are only nature’s milder aspects, not to be compared to the wrathfulness of the sea, the frigid indifference of the mountains, the treachery of the swamp, the depravity of the desert, or the terror of the jungle. But I noticed that nature, in her hatred of mankind, provided that most of the earth’s surface be covered with sea, mountains, swamp, desert, and jungle.

Remember, similitude need not imply exactitude.

Hey, what is this," he asked. "I guess maybe you could call it like love," Caroline said. "Whaddaya mean, love?" Chet asked. "Your contract expressly forbids you to fall in love during the duration of your tenth kill, and it furthermore explicitly forbids you to fall in love with your Victim." "Love," Caroline said coolly, "existed a long time before contracts." "Contracts," Martin said viciously, "are a lot more enforceable than love.

Man is the only animal whose fear of embarrassment can overcome his instinct for self-preservation.

He said, “Don’t you think that pleas based on upon the assumption of one’s own objectivity are somewhat disingenuous, to say the least?”
The crowd nodded. The tall man said easily, “Granted that all personal judgments are inherently biased. Still, judgment is the only instrument of discrimination at our disposal, and it is our work as living, developing creatures to make discriminations, from which value-judgments inevitably flow. This must be done despite the subjectivity paradox implied in making an ‘objective’ statement. That is why I say unequivocably that you were in the wrong, and no amount of reference to the observer observed dichotomy is going to change that.”

Marvin did not give way to despair. He gave way instead to anger, which was a much healthier emotion, though equally unproductive.

That's so like you Terrans," Melith remarked sadly. "You want responsibility only if it doesn't incur risk. That's a wrong attitude for running a government.

Population growth and the multifarious forms of pollution: the human animal was overgrazing his range. The human animal had destroyed everything in sight, killed off the other big animals, used up millions of years of deposits of fresh water, oil, coal, and minerals. Fragile ecosystems had been pushed to the limit, some of them beyond recovery. The death of the earth was undramatic, but it was happening, and fast. And the governments continued to squabble and defend their various economic, religious, and social doctrines. The wealth of nations large and small was bled into the continuing efforts to increase the size, ingenuity, and ferocity of the armed forces. The humans were killer ants, devoting all their time to breeding more powerful mandibles.
Something had to be done immediately to preserve and maintain the great interlocking global system of ecosystems that sustained all life upon the earth. Only by managing the entire earth as a single unit could the basis of life continue on beyond the next century or two.
But twentieth-century civilization was locked into its self-destructive groove. Nothing could be officially done until the various threats became much more threatening. But by the time that stage had been reached, it would probably be too late to do anything.

A tremor ran through him. He had chosen, he reminded himself. He alone was responsible. The psychological test had proved that.
And yet, how responsible were the psychologists who had given him the test? How responsible was Mike Terry for offering a poor man so much money? Society had woven the noose and put it around his neck, and he was hanging himself with it, and calling it free will.

Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is popular art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.”

He was the sort of man the essence of whose presence is absence.

In a way it made no difference, since nothing is permanent except our illusions.

I gave up my dream of flight and rebirth, and invented a proverb to fit the occasion: he who produces an illusion is more likely than anyone else to be taken in by it. The thought gave me very little comfort.

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.

Carmody’s jaw stiffened and he withdrew his hand. He had been pushed around long enough. Now, for the sake of his own self-esteem, he would not yield any more.