"But we may not be able to climb high enough. Look at those mountains. They go straight up, smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign promise."

"Where this area had been beautiful with its many trees and bright grass and the colored blooms of the vines that covered the trees, it was now like a battlefield. It had been necessary to create ugliness to build a beautiful boat."

"“It’s a nice toy and makes a lot of noise and looks impressive and will kill a man. But it’s wasteful and inefficient.” “You make it sound like a congressman,” Sam said."

"It was not that he was unintelligent. It was just that he was not emotionally able to comprehend democracy."

"Actors didn’t have to be politicians, but politicians had to be actors."

"His thinking wasn’t logical. But whatever the philosophers claimed, the main use of logic was to justify your emotions."

"I ought to arrest your assertions for vagrancy. They certainly are without any visible support."

"He was stiff and sometimes a little strange, which was what you’d expect from an engineer, but he had a moral backbone as inflexible as a fossilized dinosaur’s."

"Styles was an old Mississippi pilot, a handsome youth, no liar, though given to inflating facts."

"Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate."

"Dreams haunted The Riverworld."

"“Would you like to talk?” “When I dream, I am talking.” “But to yourself.” “Who knows me better?” He laughed softly. “And who can deceive you better,” she said a little tartly."

"Tell me, is this true or is it just one of those tales that people like to make up to worry others?"

"Many attributed this to a supernatural agency. Many more, among whom was Burton, did not think that there was any agency except an advanced science which accounted for this. There was no need to call in the supernatural. “No ghosts need apply,”—to quote the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Physical explanations sufficed."

"Nightmare in paradise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on make in a hell of it."

"Then she warned her self—for the ten thousandth time?—that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment."

"“You must not stereotype!” Cyrano cried. “And you are right,” she said. “That is a feeling I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often…well, most people are living stereotypes, aren’t they?”"

"People who believed in Him were deluded. The believers in God might be intelligent, but they were mentally benighted. The gears in that part of the brain which dealt with religion had been put into neutral, and they were spinning. Or the circuit of religion had been disconnected from the main circuit of the intellect. That was a bad analogy. People use their intellect to justify the nonintellective, emotionally based phenomenon called religion. Often brilliantly. But, as far as she was concerned, uselessly."

"Burton thought the man was crazy, though he was discreet enough not to say so. He and his crew had fallen into the hands of fanatics. Fortunately, the god had told Metusael that his worshipers must hurt no one unless it was in self-defense. However, he knew from experience that “self-defense” could mean whatever a person or group wanted it to mean."

"Kazz thought that putting a lump on Oskas’ head was very funny. He would have considered it to be even a better joke if the chief had drowned. Yet, among his crewmates, he was as sociable, tender, and compassionate a man as anyone could ask for. He was a primitive, and all primitives, civilized or preliterate, were tribal people. Only the tribe consisted of human beings and were treated as such. All outside the tribe though some might be considered friends, were not quite human. Therefore, they did not have to be treated as if they were completely human."

"“What does that mean?” “I don’t know, but it sounds deep. I’ll think up an explanation later.”"

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in our lousy genes. Or in the failure of one’s conquest of one’s self. The fault, dear Brutus, is in our fear of knowing ourselves."

"TV, the worst thing that had happened to the twentieth century. After the atom bomb and overpopulation, of course."

"I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman."

"He looks like he’d be a hellcat in a fight. Tom and I agreed that he was easily the best qualified. But he doesn’t know anything about books, and I need educated people around me. That may sound snobbish, but so what?"

"I, who hated the fat, smug, oily, stinking, ignorant, hypocritical, parasitical priests! And their unfeeling, merciless, cruel God!"

"You prize rank too highly."

"But he’s sincere. Which doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about."

"As for the Bible, it was a book, and all books told the truth in the sense that their authors believed they were writing a kind of truth."

"Chance, another word for destiny."

"Peter would find out that that was superstition, a reasoning from effect to cause, totally invalid. It was in a class with the belief that if you eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while you were sitting in the outhouse, the devil would get you."

"Take St. Augustine, for instance. "Asshole” was the only word that fit him. A monster of ego and selfishness. St. Francis was about as saintly as a person could be. But he was undoubtedly psychotic. Kissing a leper’s sores to demonstrate humility, indeed!"

"The religions of Jesus, Paul, and Buddha had started to degenerate before their founders were cold in their graves. Just as St. Francis’ order had begun corrupting before its founder’s body was rotten."

"“The trouble with you, Peter—one of the troubles—is you worry too much about other people’s behavior. And you have too high ideals for them, ideals which you yourself don’t try to live up to.” “I know I can’t live up to them, so I make a no pretense,” Frigate said. “But it bothers me that others claim to have these ideals and to be living up to them. If I point out that they aren’t, they get angry.” The little Moor chuckled. “Naturally. Your criticism threatens their self-image. If that were to be destroyed, they, too, would be destroyed. At least, they think so.”"

"Was destiny anything but chance? Probably. But the odds against this happening on Earth were infinity to one."

"I had the honor to serve at the siege of Arras. Where I received a thrust through the throat, the second of the serious wounds that convinced me, along with all else I had seen of wars miseries and horrors, that Mars was the stupidest of the gods."

"“I thought that was just one of the wild tales those visionaries had invented,” Jill said. “I didn’t put any more credence in it than I did in the ravings of Earth prophets. Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Buddha, Smith, Eddy, the whole sick crew.”"

"If you’ve read your history…then you’ll know that the medieval noblemen were notorious for treachery. Their god was Opportunity, no matter how many churches they built for the glory of Church and God. They had all the morals of a hyena."

"“At least, they tried,” Johnston said. “So did the eunuch in the sheik’s harem.”"

"“I don’t believe in women’s intuition,” Sam said. “They’re just culturally conditioned to observe different patterns of action and speech, different gestures and inflections from those men observe. They’re more sensitive to certain subtleties because of this conditioning.”"

"Anyway, women are about as mysterious as a tin mine. All you have to do is carry a lantern into the dark places, and you see everything. But men like to think women are the eternally mysterious. That saves men the trouble of asking questions, taking a little time and effort."

"He seemed to get along with just about everybody. Which, in my book, makes him suspect."

"“We’re not that stupid!” “No, but you’re that impulsive. Which is a form of stupidity.”"

"Imagination was the great cozener of the past."

"Suddenly, he was weeping. The tears were for the good things that had been or might have been, for the bad things that had been but should not have been."

"Beauty is beautiful because it is doomed to perish!"

"Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself."

"Malory clung to his faith with fierce obliviousness to “facts”—in itself an indication that he had gone mad, if his critics were to be believed."

"I have been forced into this situation and may like it. To survive you must lie better than the liars, deceive more than the deceivers, and kill the killers first! To me it’s sheer necessity, though justified!"

"I concluded that extreme mysticism was closely allied to madness."