Absurdists

"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?"

"You prize rank too highly."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"“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?”"

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

"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."

"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."

"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?"

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

"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."

"Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows."

"A miracle: a chance distribution of events, occurring one time in a billion."

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

"Of course, I’m only indulging in mankind’s vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence."

"Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.”"

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

"“I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!” “I don’t remember offering you any money.”"

"All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter."

"Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts."

"Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half."

"The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights."

"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."

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

"Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last. Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness. Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone. It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness. A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?"

"His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him. He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!""

"The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side. The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity."

"Yesterday's monomaniac is tomorrow's messiah…"

"Zeitgeist rides tonight, and the devil take the hindmost!"

"Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive."

"It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife. He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!" Of all the millions, he alone was awake."

"“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."

"God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth In our fingers, give us power, give us light To hold all love within our breast's small space."

"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."

"And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed [[angel], represents a new hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears."

"In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended."

"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."

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

"Though Melville omitted it, Captain Ahab said, "In one sense, Aleister Crowley is lower than whale shit. In another, he's as high as God's hat. The true shaman knows that God's hat is made out of dried whale shit.""

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

"One thing is sure, O comrades, that the love That fights to keep us rooted in the earth, But also urges us to dare the stars, This irresistible, this ancient power Wedged in the soul, unshakable, is the light That burns our roots and leaves us free for Space."