Robert Sheckley Quotes

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

We denizens of Earth have a common vice: We take what we’re offered, whether we need it or not.
You can get into a lot of trouble that way.

“You might say that,” Flynn said, thus avoiding an outright lie, since anyone might say anything whether it was true or not.

Blount’s face registered psychopathic amazement, idiot incredulity, moronic disbelief.

Strange," he said in a conversational voice, "how, for some men, the possession of a gun acts as a powerful intoxicant. It destroys the reasoning faculties, eh, Carlo?

Well, no sense crying over unspilt blood," the Prize Clerk said. "If we took full account of our eventualities, we'd soon run out of eventualities for us to take full account of.

We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.

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.

When the people have to leave a place, their dreams leave first.

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.

And a great longing overcame him, a desire to be finished with desire, to forego pleasure and pain, to quit the petty modes of achievement and failure, to have done with distractions, and get on with the business of life, which was death.

You must remember," the doctor said, "Society must be protected against the individual."
"Yes," Feerman said drowsily, "but who is to protect the individual against society?

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

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.”

“I’m going to leave you here,” Margraves said. “I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.”
“Right,” Branch said, since it was all he could say. He knew that Margraves’ unfinished business concerned a bottle.