Robert Sheckley Quotes

He exaggerated somewhat. In fact, not one word did he say that was true.

He turned to Mingus. “Why don’t you just leave them alone? I really don’t care what your motives are. Hasn’t Earth had enough emperors, dictators, generalissimos, war lords, Great Khans, Shahinshahs, Caesars, whatever you want to call them? Some of them had admirable motives—but the only people they really helped were themselves.”
“I suppose you feel that a state of anarchy is preferable?” Mingus asked.
“I think it probably is,” Hieronymous said. “The main defect of anarchy is its vulnerability to people like you.”

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

My dear Dahl, the first, the primary, task is to bring the earth back into ecological balance. That's your task, you and the Bahamas Corporation. Ours is to give people something exciting to do other than war while that is going on. Without us and our Hunt, you and your high-minded scientists will just be another group of dreamers living in an imaginary kingdom of sweet reason while the madness of real politics rages all around you. Be practical, Dahl, let's do something together." "There is something in what you say," Dahl admitted. "I've been aware for some time of the shortcomings inherent in the sane, dispassionate thinking that we scientists advocate. People don't pay any attention. Unless there's an emergency like Love Canal or Chernobyl, the idea of maintaining and upgrading the earth and its ecosystems is not exactly box-office.

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.

Outside the curtained windows, Paris stewed in its miasma of self-congratulation and diesel fumes.

Not even the thought of death can upset the man who is going into space for the first time. The journey into the unknown transcends the framework of anxiety, at least for a while.

Esotericism, which is legal, but not too much fun, prescribes to our condition. But when one tries to follow a spiritual path, nothing much happens for most of us. Faced with this lack of results, the esoteric schools put the blame squarely on us rather than on any insufficiency in their doctrines or methods. Finally, they explain our failure by taking refuge in paradoxes. They tell us, for example, that we can attain only by not wanting to attain—a neat double bind.
Some esoteric schools caution the disciple not to practise the extraordinary powers which we will acquire in the course of our work. This is surely an extraordinary statement. Most of us can’t muster the power to give up smoking, much less to levitate.

Mr. Rath’s iron face registered a rather corrugated disgust. People were useless as witnesses. Worse than useless, since they were frequently misleading. For reliability, give him a robot every time.

Would you define Good for me, Citizen Abbot?" "Certainly. Good is that force within us which inspires men to acts of conformity and subservience. The worship of Good is essentially the worship of oneself, and therefore the only true worship. The self which one worships is the ideal social being: the man content in his niche in society, yet ready to creatively advance his status. Good is gentle, since it is a true reflection of the loving and pitying universe. Good is continually changing in its aspects, although it comes to us in the... You have a strange look on your face, young man." "I'm sorry, Citizen Abbot. I believe I heard that sermon, or one very much like it.

Hope could be dangerous, desire could be catastrophic.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and I don’t like it much either.

Love, the secret and unofficial heart of pair-bonding behavior, is a force to be reckoned with but never predicted. Love supersedes all other directives and cancels previous obligations. The shared look of love is love’s preview, presenting a foretaste of the joys and sorrows to come, and setting into motion the automatic mating machinery upon which the success and stability of the State depends.

He shook his head violently, pulled himself together and swallowed a stiff dose of Infradex, a drug designed to alleviate drug reactions. Within seconds he was his old, normally depressed self. This cheered him considerably, and he left the hut in a mood teetering on the edge of equanimity.

Kettelman bristled. Nothing got him angrier than when people implied he was paranoid. It made him feel persecuted.