All Quotes

"The opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author."

"He had lost his race. And he knew that he had lost it, not by the few weeks or months that he had feared, but by millennia. The huge and silent shadows driving across the stars, more miles above his head than he dared to guess, were as far beyond his little "Columbus" as it surpassed the log canoes of paleolithic man. [...] All that the past ages had achieved was as nothing now: only one thought echoed and re-echoed through Reinhold's brain: The human race was no longer alone."

"When this book was written in the early 1950s, I was still quite impressed by the evidence for what is generally called the paranormal, and used it as a main theme of the story. Four decades later, after spending some millions of dollars of Yorkshire Television’s money researching my Mysterious World and Strange Powers programmes, I am an almost total skeptic. I have seen far too many claims dissolve into thin air, far too many demonstrations exposed as fakes."

"Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets."

"If you want a single proof of the essential—how shall I put it—benevolence of the Overlords, think of that cruelty-to-animals order which they made within a month of their arrival. If I had had any doubts about Karellen before, that banished them!"

"Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded."

"It was a tribute to the Overlords' psychology, and to their careful years of preparation, that only a few people fainted. Yet there could have been fewer still, anywhere in the world, who did not feel the ancient terror brush for one awful instant against their minds before reason banished it forever. There was no mistake. The leathery wings, the little horns, the barbed tail—all were there. The most terrible of all legends had come to life, out of the unknown past. Yet now it stood smiling, in ebon majesty, with the sunlight gleaming upon its tremendous body, and with a human child resting trustfully on either arm."

"Fifty years is ample time to change the world and it's people almost beyond recognition. All that I'd required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal- and power"

"All political problems," Karellen had once told Stormgren, "can be solved by the correct application of power"

"Crime had practically vanished. It had become unnecessary and impossible. When no one lacks anything there is no point in stealing."

"Western man had relearned-what the rest of the world had never forgotten-that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth."

"The instrument he handed over on permanent loan to the World History Foundation was nothing more than a television receiver with an elaborate set of controls for determining co-ordinates in time and space. [...] One had merely to adjust the controls, and a window into the past was opened up. Almost the whole of human history for the past five thousand years became accessible in an instant. [...] Within a few days, all mankind's multitudinous messiahs had lost their divinity. Beneath the fierce passionless light of truth, faiths that had sustained millions for twice a thousand years vanished like morning dew. All the good and all the evil they had wrought were swept suddenly into the past, and could touch the minds of men no more. Humanity had lost its ancient gods: now it was old enough to have no need for new ones."

"The evidence is confused with mysticism—perhaps the prime aberration of the human mind."

"A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom."

"What finally decided him was the thought that, if he neglected this incredible opportunity, he would never forgive himself. All the rest of his life would be spent in vain regrets—and nothing could be worse than that."

"It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the color of sunset, of autumn."

"The group of artists and scientists that had so far done least was the one that had attracted the greatest interest --and the greatest alarm. There was the team working on "total identification." The history of the cinema gave the clue to their actions. First sound, then color, then stereoscopy, then cinerama, had made the old "moving pictures" more and more like reality itself. Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience and became part of the action. to achieve this would involve stimulation of all the senses, and perhaps hypnosis as well but many believed it to be practical. When the goal was attained, there would be an enormous enrichment of human experience. A man could become --for a while, at least-- any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary. He could even be a plant or an animal, if it proved possible to capture and record the sense impressions of other living creatures. And when the "program" was over, he would have acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual life --indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself."

"“I've invented a new definition for TV,” he muttered gloomily. “I've decided it’s a device for hindering communication between artist and audience.”"

"Few artists thrive in solitude, and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests."

"Far, far away on the horizon was something that was not of Earth—a line of misty columns, tapering slightly as they soared out of the sea and lost themselves among the clouds. They were spaced with perfect precision along the rim of the planet—too huge to be artificial, yet too regular to be natural. ("Sideneus 4 and the Pillars of the Dawn," said Rashaverak, and there was awe in his voice. "He has reached the center of the Universe." "And he has barely begun his journey," answered Karellen.)"

"A century ago we came to your world and saved you from self-destruction. I do not believe that anyone would deny that fact—but what that self-destruction was, you never guessed."

"Across that abyss, there is only one bridge. Few races, unaided, have ever found it. Some have turned back while there was still time, avoiding both the danger and the achievement. Their worlds have become Elysian islands of effortless content, playing no further part in the story of the universe. That would never have been your fate—or your fortune. Your race was too vital for that. It would have plunged into ruin and taken others with it, for you would never have found the bridge."

"Your mystics, though they were lost in their own delusions, had seen part of the truth. There are powers of the mind, and powers beyond the mind, which your science could never have brought within its framework without shattering it entirely. [...] During the first half of the twentieth century, a few of your scientists began to investigate these matters. They did not know it, but they were tampering with the lock of Pandora's box. The forces they might have unleashed transcended any perils that the atom could have brought. For the physicists could only have ruined the Earth: the paraphysicists could have spread havoc to the stars."

"All these potentialities, all these latent powers—we do not possess them, nor do we understand them. Our intellects are far more powerful than yours, but there is something in your minds that has always eluded us."

"We believe—it is only a theory—that the Overmind is trying to grow, to extend its powers and its awareness of the universe. By now it must be the sum of many races, and long ago it left the tyranny of matter behind. It is conscious of intelligence, everywhere. When it knew that you were almost ready, it sent us here to do its bidding, to prepare you for the transformation that is now at hand."

"It starts with a single individual—always a child—and then spreads explosively, like the formation of crystals round the first nucleus in a saturated solution. Adults will not be affected, for their minds are already set in an unalterable mould."

"What you have brought into the world may be utterly alien, it may share none of your desires or hopes, it may look upon your greatest achievements as childish toys—yet it is something wonderful, and you will have created it. When our race is forgotten, part of yours will still exist. Do not, therefore, condemn us for what we were compelled to do. And remember this—we shall always envy you."

"...no one of intelligence resents the inevitable."

"The buildings round me, the ground, the mountains—everything’s like a glass—I can see through it. [...] The light! From beneath me—inside the Earth—shining upward, through the rocks, the ground, everything—growing brighter, brighter, blinding—"

"There was nothing left of Earth: They had leeched away the last atoms of its substance. It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs towards the Sun. Six thousand million kilometers beyond the orbit of Pluto, Karellen sat before a suddenly darkened screen. [...] The weight of centuries was upon him, and a sadness that no logic could dispel."

"Constitutional protection for bodily autonomy is of vital importance to people with disabilities, because that protection has far too often been denied to them in both reproductive and non-reproductive contexts. Perhaps most notoriously, around 60,000 Americans were forcibly sterilized in state-sanctioned programs to prevent those adjudged to have psychiatric disabilities from reproducing."

"With disabled people in particular, police aren't trained to deal with us, they shoot first and ask questions later instead of taking the time to try and understand what we want to get across during interactions with them. Because everything is considered a threat first, we are more likely to die first. I absolutely don't think that the police are trained properly to handle calls when disability and mental illness are at play. If they did Alfred would still be alive."

"Pamela Anderson has more prosthetics in her body than I do; nobody calls her disabled."

"The provision of the wheelchairs would therefore address some challenges (for the disabled) such as integration into society as well as access to health and basic services and fill other gaps. We cannot talk about inclusivity if we do not empower people, at the grassroots level."

"He just wrote a really cogent, beautiful response online. Didn’t fight with anybody, didn’t call anybody anything, didn’t judge anybody. And he completely opened my eyes to a perspective I never thought of. He said, “I understand what an actor is. I, too, am an actor. But I’m an actor in a wheelchair, and I never see parts that are leading roles for a person in a wheelchair. And so the one time I see a role where there’s a person in a wheelchair, I think, wow, this could be it. This could be the moment where I have all of the tools necessary to play this part. Do I get a shot at playing it?” And he was like, “Because when you think of it on the flip side, they never call people with wheelchairs in to play able-bodied people, and they’ll get able-bodied people to play people in wheelchairs.” I never thought of it like that. My perspective, obviously, as someone who is not in a wheelchair—I just never thought of it that way. And I sat there and I was like, it’s powerful because you don’t think about representation, you don’t think about how important it is for people to see themselves onscreen in a real way. And at the same time, I don’t think Bryan Cranston did anything wrong. I don’t think everything has to be a fight. It’s just, like, a moment to be like, hey, maybe next time people in Hollywood can look at that and go, maybe you can get a relatively unknown actor to play that role and then put an A-lister opposite them and maybe this becomes their breakout. Maybe this becomes the thing that blows them up. And that’s where you realize how powerful representation is, because if you’re a person in a wheelchair, how many movies come along where the lead character is in a wheelchair? There’s virtually none. And even myself, I was like, oh man, I have to try and understand that a little bit more. It was eye-opening."

"When people project and understand that in an instant and as they grow older they face Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, MS, strokes, all the diseases of the brain and central nervous system, which will effect the entire population as we get older. People begin to realize hey I'm lucky, I'm just temporarily not disabled. So, the point is we're beginning to see equality, we're beginning to see new opportunities and that brings me to the other part we've already talked about, acceptance and the other part is denial. And what I mean by that, and everybody has to work it out for themselves, my point of view may not be your point of view, so please hold onto your belief and let me hold onto my belief. But my belief is that there is nothing we can't accomplish if we set our minds to it."

"Some people are able to accept living with a severe disability. I am not one of them, and that is why I have a keen interest in research and am deeply disturbed by unreasonable attempts to block scientific progress."

"While bilingual is understood as a valuable asset or goal for middle-class and upper-class students, for working-class and poor students it is framed as a disability that must be overcome"

"Due to the lack of federal record-keeping, we can’t even tell you precisely how many people are killed by police in the US in any given year, let alone how many of them are disabled. But we do know it’s a lot: A report from the Ruderman Family Foundation earlier this year found wildly varying estimates of the number of disabled people killed by police, from 25 percent to more than 40 percent of police shooting victims. For perspective, census data puts the overall incidence of disability at about 20 percent of the population."

"At the same time, people of color in the United States are generally more likely to be disabled, or to lack adequate care, due to factors like environmental racism, occupational segregation, and poor access to health care. This is a systemic inequality that begins long before a fatal interaction with police ever takes place."

"[Bioethics] is "a phony branch of elite philosophy whose principle purpose seems to be to justify allowing badly ill or disabled people to die.""

"Not only do physically disabled people have experiences which are not available to the able-bodied, they are in a better position to transcend cultural mythologies about the body, because they cannot do things the able-bodied feel they must do in order to be happy, ‘normal,’ and sane….If disabled people were truly heard, an explosion of knowledge of the human body and psyche would take place."

"There are days when I am shocked that I am still alive. Like millions of disabled, chronically ill, and older people, I spend an extraordinary amount of effort just existing. Beyond the efforts to keep our bodies from falling apart, we face existential threats from a society that actively silences, diminishes, excludes, and eliminates us."

"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."

"There are days when I am overwhelmed with grief and rage at the regressive attitudes toward public health and disabled people. In my opinion, the ableist, fascistic, and eugenic nature of proposed mask bans under consideration in New York City and Los Angeles is bleak. But what is happening now is not new or surprising; the hate is more explicit, that’s all."

"What is clear to me is that disabled people have never felt safe. Many of us view masking as a form of solidarity with workers, activists, and people of color all over the world fighting fascism and genocide. But mask bans send the message that it is a crime to be disabled. I think of people who have fought hard to stay relatively safe since early 2020, those who hang on a precipice that feels like it could fall at any moment. Some days I wonder what my breaking point will be."

"Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity.’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live."

"If there was a country called disabled, I would be from there. I live disabled culture, eat disabled food, make disabled love, cry disabled tears, climb disabled mountains and tell disabled stories…"

"Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you’re needed by someone."

"The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives federal civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, employment, transportation, State and local government services, and telecommunications."