Of course, the reader might argue that I was as stubborn in my viewpoint as they were in theirs. Yes, indeed, but I was right and they were wrong and that made the difference.
It’s really disheartening, the universal stupidity. I think that I wouldn’t grieve at mankind’s suicide through sheer evilness of heart, or through mere recklessness. There’s something so damned undignified at going to destruction through sheer thickheaded stupidity. What’s the use of being men if that’s how you have to die.
Finge went on. “There are some things, however, they must not know. Prime among them, of course, is the manner in which we alter Reality when necessary. The insecurity such knowledge would arouse would be most harmful. It is always necessary to breed out of Reality any factors that might lead to such knowledge and we have never been troubled with it.
Century or another. Usually, the dangerous beliefs are those which concentrate particularly in the ruling classes of an era; the classes that have most contact with us and, at the same time, carry the important weight of what is called public opinion.” Finge paused as though he expected Harlan to offer some comment or ask some question. Harlan did neither. Finge continued. “Ever since the Reality Change 433–486, Serial Number.
He threw his cigar away and looked up at the outstretched Galaxy. “Back to oil and coal, are they?” he murmured – and what the rest of his thoughts were he kept to himself.
I’m a man of business. If it adds up to a plus mark, I’m for it.
Where the stars are scattered thinly,′ quoted Barr, ‘And the cold of space seeps in.
Being helpless is one of the things that isn’t altogether amusing.” – Gilbert.
Sizzling Saturn, we’ve got a lunatic robot on our hands.
Now a human caught in an impossibility often responds by a retreat from reality: by entry into a world of delusion, or by taking to drink, going of into hysteria, or jumping off a bridge. It all comes to the same thing-a refusal or inability to face the situation squarely.
Perhaps! Your opinions are yours, of course. Still you are rather young.” Dryly. “It is a fault that most people are guilty of at some period of their life. You became mayor of the city when you were two years younger than I am now.
But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.′ ‘It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand – at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war.
Well, there is one – a new one. In this past year or two, there has come word of a strange man whom they call the Mule.” “The Mule?” She considered. “Ever hear of him, Torie?
Bible: Various portions of it, when properly interpreted, contain a code of behaviour which many men consider best suited to the ultimate happiness of mankind.
One way of saving on energy use would be to do away with unnecessary transportation. For instance, people commute between work and home, or travel long distances to engage in business conferences. With the development of improved communications and increasing automation, it will become possible in the not-too-distant future, for people to control and maintain business operations and machinery at a distance.
Baley tried to picture a world as a sphere being lit and unlit as it turned. He found it hard to do and felt scornful of the so-superior Spacers who let such an essential thing as time be dictated to them by the vagaries of planetary movements.
Don’t you think my interest can be real, even granted that it is professional, too?” “No, I don’t.
If nuclear power makes them dangerous, a sincere friendship through trade will be many times better than an insecure overlordship, based on the hated supremacy of a foreign spiritual power, which, once it weakens ever so slightly, can only fall entirely and leave nothing substantial behind except an immortal fear and hate.
The mistiness of distance hides the truth.
My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required.