Edmund Cooper

“Life itself has become ludicrous.”

“But then history was made by fools.”

“The real struggle is between order and anarchy.”

“Cultures and societies consumed each other, as well as animals and men.”

“In a fantastic world, the fantastic had become merely ordinary.”

“But no one can be immune to the laws of chance.”

“There is no acceptable true image.”

“There is no other god but life. Life is the only holy thing. And when that goes that is the death of God.”

“Thus, ultimately, there never could be an absolute end; just as there never could have been an absolute beginning. There could only be a continuous unfolding.”

“For mankind may survive and live without machines, and still be civilised. But without compassion, the human race can only elaborate upon the futile cunning and the barren intelligence of the great apes.”

“But in adversity, intelligence alone cannot sustain hope. Ultimately, hope can be sustained only by finding purpose in adversity, by imposing a pattern on the fortuitous disasters of existence. Human beings, if force to it, will compromise their intelligence to preserve their hope.”

“For death is only a loss of radiance, and birth is only the beginning of a separate journey.”

“All living things sustain each other. All living things depend upon death not as an end, an absolute completion, but as a beginning of a new rhythm, a way of fulfillment in passing on the restless force of life.”

“All fanaticism springs from the religious impulse.”

“He who expects little is rarely disappointed.”

“It is not in the nature of man to accept permanent failure.”

“It is the nature of men to act negatively but to dream and hope positively.”

“But it may be that there is happiness in the very things we rejected - in work and responsibility. In the rearing of children and in the challenge of permanent love.”

“There is only the eternal serial moment of now. It contains the total pattern, the complete history.”

“It is an inflexible law that all living things must seek to dominate their environment.”