William Tenn Quotes

Scrabbling like mad at their beloved fence, the politicians tried to avoid taking a definite position on either side.

He knew what the score was—and from here on out, he would be acting on what he knew rather than on what others told him.

And there, right there, is the area in which science fiction leads the literary side of its life. It is the job of the science-fiction writer to take the utterly fantastic, if need be, and make it seem as real as a copy of today's tabloid newspaper folded to the sports section. To the extent that he succeeds in this he is a good science-fiction writer, and to the extent that he fails to make the story believable he is a bad one, be it ever so full of faster-than-light gimmicks and futuristic individuals with triple brains and mechanical genitalia.

Creatures trained in warfare are what he calls 'philosophically anti-life.'

That’s the big gimmick in this business—dressing it up so they can’t tell it’s the same thing they’ve been seeing since they got their first universal vaccination. If you dress it up enough, the sticks will always go nuts over it. Maybe the critics will make cracks, sure, but who reads the critics?

And, as a result of this examination," the forked pink beard smiled down gently from above, "the specialists discovered that what you call the human race was nonviable. That is, while the individuals composing it had strongly developed instincts of self-preservation, the species as a whole was suicidal."
"Suicidal!" I found myself breathing up with rest.
"Quite. This is a matter on which there can be little argument from the more honest among you. High civilization is a product of communal living and Man, in groups, has always tended to wipe himself out. In fact, a large factor in the development of what little civilization you do experience has been the rewards contingent upon the development of mass-destruction weapons.

Science, my forward-looking friend, is a complex of interlocking theories, all derived from observation.

Haven’t you ever heard it said that money isn’t everything, but that what it isn’t it can buy?

Wh-who are you? And what do you want?"
"Joseph Burns, a poor but honest newspaperman." He considered for a moment. "Well, poor, anyway.

I've always been a loner. With whatever help I can buy, I take care of myself. I'm not interested in any goal except the extra buck. First and last, I'm a businessman."
"Oh, stop it!" the dark man took a turn up and down the office angrily. "This is a planet-wide emergency. There are times when you can't be a businessman."
"I deny that. I can't conceive of such a time."
Braganza snorted. "You can't be a businessman if you're strapped to a huge pile of blazing faggots. You can't be a businessman if people's minds are so thoroughly controlled that they'll stop eating at their leader's command. You can't be a businessman, my slavering, acquisitive friend, if demand is so well in hand that it ceases to exist."
"That's impossible." Hebster had leaped to his feet. To his amazement, he heard his voice climbing up the scale to hysteria. "There's always demand. Always! The trick is to find what new form it's taken and then fill it!"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to make fun of your religion.

He reached into his soul for an article of fundamental faith, found it. “I can make money,” he quoted to himself. “That’s what I’m good for. That’s what I can always do.”

People quoted Henry Dorselblad’s indictment of modern society: “Women needed the law’s special protection when they were legally inferiors of men. Now they have equality and special protection. They can’t have both!”

Whether or not the science fiction will eventually develop a Shakespeare, I would not dare to predict. But I do claim that it is a literature produced by our times as much as Shakespeare's was by his. And its unfortunate, frequent vulgarities can well be equated with the vulgarities and plebeian absurdities of much Elizabethan writing, both reflecting the primitive vitality of the mass audience that responded to them. It is, of course, in any age, only moribund fiction that is polished to a point of antisepsis, and that will, in losing touch with its audience, “lose the name of action.” This new medium has as yet lost neither.

Laws produce lawbreakers, Bernie, like hens produce eggs. Civilization has nothing to do with it.

A man doesn’t volunteer for a hitch in hell just so he can knock off one of the devils.