"“What are you going to do for a career?” Diverted from his orbit, Donald binked. “Well, something which uses up a minimum of my time, I imagine. So I can use the rest to mortar up the gaps in my education.”"

"Nothing short of religion could persuade a normal girl to make herself look so awful."

"COINCIDENCE You weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on."

"Rather painfully, we managed to digest Darwinian evolution so far as physical attributes were concerned within half a century of the initial controversy. (I say “we,” but if you’re a Bible-thumping fundamentalist I expect you at this point to take the book by one corner at arm’s length and ceremonially consign it to the place where you put most sensible ideas, along with everything else you decline to acknowledge the existence of, such as mainly shit.)"

"“I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said at length. The stench and crackle of burning boats was vivid to him."

"I’m unattuned to happiness."

"SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that’s processed by General Technics’ famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves."

"HIPCRIME You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope."

"Did you never hear it said that what sets the genius apart from the plodder is the ability to see what happens and not what he expects to happen?"

"—If I ever get good at hospital politics, I think I shall start to hate myself."

"Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us."

"—Blessed are they who expect the worst, for they shall get it!"

"NEGRO Member of a subgroup of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamed—not by its residents—Africa. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis."

"A cripple can still be a person, but in what sense is a lunatic human? Humanity’s in the mind, in the tangle of thoughts spun by the brain, and once that’s gone what remains is human only in outward shape."

"—Why can I never visualize things turning out better as clearly as I can visualize the catastrophes I scraped past by a hair? “Everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds!” Hah!"

"He regarded himself as inhabiting a jungle in which behind masks of civilised behavior and conventional politeness everybody, doctor or not, was out for what he could get. No means of enhancing his reputation, status and income escaped him."

"One of the first benefits of an improved standard of living, as he had already been superficially aware, is to postpone the age at which a person’s opinions congeal for life. Someone forced by poverty to avoid spending on enlarging his horizons the energy and time needed simply for staying alive adopted the attitudes, ready-made, of his environment. This was why students formed the backbone of so many revolutionary movements, for instance."

"Men change their gods, and when they have changed them often enough they cease to fear their power."

"Amid the turmoil of change, old people could do no more than wonder what had hit them, and long without enthusiasm for the simpler past."

"—Among the other things lunatics make: their own version of truth."

"Independence has limits. But dependence has, too. I want to set some for myself, that’s all."

"A determined elbow jabbed him in the ribs, and he had to come close enough to waking to resist the nudges. He put both arms around his petite, dark, power-packed wife, Midge, and uttered an optimistic grunt. Seven years of marriage enabled her to translate: “Five more minutes?”"

"Some people—mostly attractive women—don’t believe attractive women can act."

"I don’t believe you can cow people into loyalty. Subservience, maybe. But then you must always trust the retainer who guards your back."

"Now, listen. Marriage is binding as a civil contract, but it has—like all my favorite contracts—an escape clause. I make my living by spotting them."

"I love the place, and when they get love down to a bunch of factors you can analyse with a computer there’ll be nothing left of whatever makes it worth being human!"

"Their lusts had known no limit until now. They had gorged themselves, surpassed their own imaginings again and again, recklessly squandering what they had supposed to be inexhaustible; they had been like children in a house filled with sweetmeats, destroying what they could not consume. Until now. Now it was as though the planet itself was sick of their arrogance."

"Colin felt a shiver pass down his spine. What man, granted total power, could refrain from using it? And would not his first target inevitably be his fellow men?"

"—What was I thinking earlier about lunatics making their own version of truth? Why specify lunatics?"

"Cham Loc knew little of affairs of state, but he was aware that whenever politicians talked about matters of inflexible principle, life was scheduled to become even more difficult that usual."

"“And there are more idiots than suckers in the world,” Barney said with a rueful chuckle. “One every second, not one a minute, right?”"

"If you so much as touch him, I’ll have to smash every bone in your body—twice, to make sure I didn’t miss any the first time. I don’t recommend the experience."

"Joel groaned softly. “I-ah-I don’t think I was altogether myself,” he excused. “Are you ever?” Bertrand countered. “What?” “I am always my self, even when my objurgatory circuits are cut in by some frustration-inducing outside event. But you’re invariably either drunk or suffering indigestion or still half-asleep or so excited as to be manic or so downcast as to be suicidal or—” Loftily Joel broke in: “That’s part of the marvel and wonder of the subjective human experience, not susceptible machine analysis.” He gulped the last of his brandy and set the glass aside. “And we are a fantastic species really, aren’t we? For all our shortcomings! I mean, well—here I am talking to a machine, for pity’s sake, a machine, a manufactured article! So cleverly designed, it’s impossible to tell that its responses are programmed in, not the result of intelligence.” “I resent that,” Bertrand said, but Joel ignored the comment."

"A doctor is as good as the researchers backing him up."

"No faith can possibly suffice. It’s always undermined by ignorance."

"“I see what Gene is driving at. To dream of changing the whole universe in accordance with a set of local preconceptions!...Oh, it’s ridiculous!” “A missionary,” Gene repeated with a solemn nod. “By definition: a person who does without intending it more harm than good.”"

"If there is a hell, perhaps it consists in living up to all one’s promises."

"One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It's of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it's very important to a person."

"Get me a drink of water, please, and something to quiet my belly. It’s rumbling so much I can’t hear myself think."

"His brief and frustrating dialogue with them had convinced him that they must divide the human race into three categories: staff, patients and potential patients."

"If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."

"The writers who influenced me most tended to be those who were the most prolific. John Brunner was very prolific-my favorites are Polymath, The Whole Man, and The Long Result..."

"It’s common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it were on your side rather than theirs."

"It was a great image, especially for areas where there was strong Muslim influence and the concomitant view prevailed that women had no souls."

"That, chiefly, was why Flamen put up with him. He had never dared tarnish his own image of himself by learning the whore’s-trading skills required to keep afloat in the cut-throat ocean of modern business, yet he correspondingly did not dare to forgo them altogether. Prior was a perfect compromise: the epitome of self-deluded honor, who could dismiss the most flagrant kind of cheating from his conscience on the grounds that he had thought of it and he could not possibly be a dishonest man."

"What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don’t know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree."

"It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with."

"Bathed in his currents of liquid helium, self-contained, immobile, vastly well informed by every mechanical sense: Shalmaneser. Every now and again there passes through his circuits a pulse which carries the cybernetic equivalent of the phrase, “Christ, what an imagination I’ve got.“"