"Very seldom, only in rare moments of clarity, only after ages of misapprehension, did a few of them, here and there, now and again, begin to have the deeper insight into the world’s nature and man’s. And no sooner had this precious insight begun to propagate itself, than it would be blotted out by some small or great disaster, by epidemic disease, by the spontaneous disruption of society, by an access of racial imbecility, by a prolonged bombardment of meteorites, or by the mere cowardice and vertigo that dared not look down the precipice of fact."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandAcademics from the United KingdomScience fiction authors from the United KingdomPeople from Liverpool
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter XIII: Humanity on Venus; Section 1, “Taking Root Again” (p. 195)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Olaf Stapledon
William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886 – 6 September 1950) was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction. His best known, and what he considered as his best work, was Star Maker (1937), which included the first known description of a Dyson sphere. The Dyson sphere was later described by Freeman Dyson in the 1959 article "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-Red Radiation" in Science, as one possible method of locating extraterrestrial intelligence.
117 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Olaf Stapledon →
Related Quotes
"Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in orde…"
"Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, op…"
"Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship…"
"As the months of agony advanced, there was bred in the warring peoples a genuine and even passionate will for peace a…"
"In some minds the defence of the human spirit was sincerely identified with the defence of a particular nation, conce…"
"The economic life of the human race had for some time been based on coal, but latterly oil had been found a far more …"
"In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared…"
"Thus it was that America sank further and further into Americanism. Vast wealth and industry, and also brilliant inve…"
"But the most lasting agony of this war was suffered, not by the defeated, but by the victors. For when their passion …"
"The precept, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” breeds in us most often the disposition to see one’s neighbor merely as …"