I now believe that television itself, the medium of sitting in front of a magic box that pulses images at us endlessly, the act of watching TV, per se, is mind crushing. It is soul deadening, dehumanizing, soporific in a poisonous way, ultimately brutalizing. It is, simply put so you cannot mistake my meaning, a bad thing.

— Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison Quotes

I offer you the words of the Polish poet Edward Yashinsky, who said, “Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you; fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.

— Harlan Ellison

Story after story has marched the same old WASP engineer paperdoll through the same old story lines, most of which were very good when they were used by H. G. Wells, but which are now showing signs of wear.

— Harlan Ellison

Man denkt sich nicht mit der psychischen Brechstange in jemanden hinein.

— Harlan Ellison

The problem isn’t what to say about the incredible Ursula Le Guin, it’s where to start.

— Harlan Ellison

The English are slightly more civilized than anyone else has yet been. Also England is a good country for introverts; they have a place in society for the introvert, which the United States has not.

— Harlan Ellison

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” S. J. LEC.

— Harlan Ellison

Humor should not be dissected because nothing lives through dissection.

— Harlan Ellison

If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.

— Harlan Ellison

A writer who writes more than he reads is an amateur.

— Harlan Ellison

Or, as Goethe summed it: “Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.

— Harlan Ellison

There is only one real evil in the world: mediocrity.

— Harlan Ellison

Excellence is its own master, owes no allegiance, bows its head to no regimen. It exists pure and whole like the silver face of the moon. Untouchable, unreachable, exquisite. But frustrating because it reminds us of how much mediocrity we put up with, just to get through the week.

— Harlan Ellison

No, Father. I lack for nothing. I have my meal cakes and my ale. I have my shadows and my colors. And there is the smell of time passing. I need nothing more.

— Harlan Ellison

First there was light, and then there was no-light. First there was heat, and then there was no-heat. And – First there was love, and then there was no-love. But in its place did not come the absence of love, the emptiness that the going of light and heat had left. Another moved in to take its place. In its place came hate.

— Harlan Ellison

He had discovered the scents and aromas of a spring that was eternally one day away.

— Harlan Ellison

Also England is a good country for introverts; they have a place in society for the introvert, which the United States has not.

— Harlan Ellison

Ashamed apologies and a gentle thank you. I do not digress.

— Harlan Ellison

He would never let us go. We were his belly slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time. We would be forever with him, with the cavern-filling bulk of the creature machine, with the all-mind soulless world he had become. He was Earth, and we were the fruit of that Earth; and though he had eaten us he would never digest us. We could not die. We had tried it. We had attempted suicide, oh one or two of us had. But AM had stopped us. I suppose we had wanted to be stopped.

— Harlan Ellison

Some hundreds of years may have passed. I don’t know. AM has been having fun for some time, accelerating and retarding my time sense. I will say the word now. Now. It took me ten months to say now. I don’t know. I think it has been some hundreds of years.

— Harlan Ellison

You do not have a right to an opinion. You have the right to an informed opinion. You do not have a right to be ignorant.

— Harlan Ellison
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