Brian Aldiss

"Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts."

"One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir."

"Keep violence in the mind where it belongs."

"When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay."

"Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction — it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass."

"One of the objections I have against Campbell's Astounding was that there was too little love in it. It was a very loveless magazine. They never took enough account of the feeling that is always in SF."

"Aldiss’s second law of thermo-linguistics states that what is most popular is rarely best and that what is best is rarely most popular."

"All of which makes one feel that the centuries of science upon which our western culture is based have travelled unmarked through the popular mind. A surprising number of people are willing to junk the entire accumulation of knowledge since Ancient Greece after watching Uri Geller perform for five minutes on their twenty-three inch screen."

"There has always been a belief in miracles in the popular mind. As L. Sprague de Camp once said, the public would rather be bunked than debunked."

"Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name."

"Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem."

"I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer."

"Digging deep in a Martian desert men discovered an enormous brain. It suddenly started to think at them — So they covered it up again..."

"Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed — now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down..."

"The greatest human achievement is to fulfil one’s destiny."

"What we do not know is what became of the Korlevalulaw. They must have reigned so long, they must have been so invincible to all but Time."

"The quest for pattern is a basic instinct."

"I knew there was no ultimate ‘secret of the universe’—and in any case, supposing humanity to be merely a construct of the Korlevalulaw: who then ‘constructed’ the Korlevalulaw? The prime question was merely set back one step."

"The stone in my hand hides A secret natural history: Climates and times unknown, A river unseen."

"That is why you are so troubled. You see through the deception, yet you refuse to see through the deception."

"Only a madman would claim that there is some thing unreal about reality."

"Poverty is the natural state for humanity. Wealth starts in the stomach and corrupts it.…"

"The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust."

"Why should you be confused just because you come from a confused civilization?"

"You were fool enough to think that one hundred and fifty million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man’s cerebral vortex."

"If adolescence did not exist it would be unnecessary to invent it!"

"You know that if you had been in charge of creation you would have found some medium less heart-breaking than Time to stage it in."

"You are like all cruel men, sentimental; you are like all sentimental men; squeamish."

"Poor little warrior, science will never invent anything to assist the titanic death you want in the contra-terrene caverns of your fee-fi-fo-fumblingly fearful id!"

"“The intelligent have been overwhelmed by the dull. Is that not an invasion?” “More, I would say, of a self-betrayal.”"

"You know why I am a prisoner—because the laws are so stupid that we prefer to break them than to live by them, although it means life-long imprisonment."

"He gets bored with the effort of trying to think, and is unhappy because he knows thinking, or at least “thinking-to-a-purpose” is on the black list of party activities."

"“You see life as a contrast between misery and pleasure, Jon; that is not a correct interpretation.” “It’s a pretty good rule of thumb, I should have thought.” “Thought and non-thought is the only valid line of comparison.” “Bit of a bird’s-eye view, isn’t it? That puts us on the same level as the proles.” “Exactly.”"

"“They enjoy their show of might,” Adam said. “These people have to express their unhappiness by using ugly things like guns and ill-fitting uniforms, and the whole conception of the camp.”"

"He had the settled expression of a certain kind of peasant—the kind that accepts, with protest but without malice, the vagaries of life. It is the gift life sends to compensate for the lack of a high I.Q."

"There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when it looked as if the intellect might win over the body, and our species become something worthwhile. But too much procreation killed that illusion."

"Never, never let action become a substitute for thought."

"Why don’t you go somewhere quietly and consult your history books if you have no consciences to consult?"

"If you think with your emotions, slight glandular changes are sufficient to revise your entire outlook."

"The ability to change should not be despised."

"It’s the duty of men in office not to be misled."

"I kill from conviction, not to pass a personality quiz."

"Carnage added to carnage does not equal peace."

"When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him. He became the first scientific animal. And at last, via information theory and great computers, he gained knowledge of all his parts. He formed the Laws of Integration, which reveal all beings as part of a pattern and show them their part in the pattern. There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created."

"Men left their strange hobbies on Earth and Venus and projected themselves into the pattern. Their entire personalities were merged with the texture of space itself. Through science, they reached immortality. It was a one-way passage. They did not return. Each Involute carried thousands or even millions of people. There they were, not dead, not living. How they exulted or wept in their transubstantiation, no one left could say. Only this could be said: man had gone, and a great emptiness was fallen over Earth."

"At least the mentor’s point was made: loneliness was psychological, not statistical."

"The only sort of tasks worth being set were impossible ones."

"All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness—or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know. Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share."

"Insane? To disobey a law of the universe was impossible, not insane."

"The day of the android has dawned."