Edgar Pangborn

““Faith,” she said gently. “But, Will darling, I just never have seen any of the mountains they say it moved.””

““You have to fight back. Can’t afford not to, with your intelligence. People hate intelligence, didn’t you know?”“Depends on what it does to ’em, doesn’t it?”“Not so much, Angelo. Dream up a new gadget, they’ll be grateful for a while,” said Feuermann’s voice. “It’ll be only the gadget they love, not the brain that made it—that they fear. They may have enough superstitious dread to worship it—devil-worship—but never will they respect it except superstitiously.””

“I notice men themselves have never invented a god capable of understanding them.”

“Human beings have never been very adult about cleaning up after themselves.”

“Namir would know all the uses of scandal and innuendo and half-truths. Strange weapons, so easy to take up, the stain indelible on user and victim.”

“In intelligent life, human or Martian, maybe there has always been a genuine division between those who honor the individuality of others and those who are driven to control and pervert it.”

“A justifiable expense, Drozma, if only to let Angelo discover the woods—at any rate I have been in most of the temples and cathedrals of the world, and the peace I sometimes found in them was never more than a small substitute for what there is under the arches of the leaves.”

“In politics, wishful thinking just gives the wolves a license to howl.”

““And where is your guarantee against war in that, Miles?”“There can’t be any except in human ethical maturity. A sensible political structure would help enormously, but there’s going to be risk of war so long as men think they can justify hating strangers and grabbing for power. Human hearts and minds are basic—the rest is mechanics.””

“Maybe the schools have come to regard education as a sort of by-product, something it would be nice to have if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“One doesn’t look for the small promises of an ethical revolution in the headlines: the ocean’s currents do not derive from the ocean’s tempests.”

“One would think that the mere shortness of life would be a reminder that to destroy beauty is to destroy one’s own self too.”

“I’ve watched human beings fool around with love. Love of self mostly, but also love of place, work, ideas; love of friends, of male and female, parent and child. I can’t think of any human illusions more comic than those of love.”

“Patience is a narcotic for the weak.”