John Brunner

“She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: "And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects!”

“There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better.”

“It's natural for a man to defend what's dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles-in short to defend not himself but people whom he's never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him-you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. Result: the society has to defend itself from its defenders, because what's admirable in wartime is termed psychopathic in peace. It's easier to wreck a man than to repair him. Ask any psychotherapist. And take a look at the crime figures among veterans.”

“The walls were chipped and needed paint. The windows were mostly okay but one pane was blocked with cardboard. There were fleas the exterminator couldn't kill and rats that scrabbled in the walls and mice who left droppings like a cocked snook and roaches that thrived on insecticide, even the illegal kinds.”

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

“It's common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it was on your side and not theirs.”

“What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported-and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores-these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun.”

“Man has one name, and many more than two natures. But the essential two are these: that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos… A third element of man’s nature is this: that he shall not understand what he is doing.”

“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.”

“You will die, and I, and all we can create—why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge.”

“It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.”