“It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button. ”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“True, you’re not a slave. You’re worse off than that by a long, long way. You’re a predatory beast shut up in a cage of which the bars aren’t fixed, solid objects you can gnaw at or in despair batter against with your head until you get punch-drunk and stop worrying. No, those bars are the competing members of your own species, at least as cunning as you on average, forever shifting around so you can’t pin them down, liable to get in your way without the least warning, disorienting your personal environment until you want to grab a gun or an axe and turn mucker.”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“You don’t bother to memorise the literature—you learn to read and keep a shelf of books.”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“Putain mais quelle fichue imagination je peux avoir ...”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“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.”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“Take stock, citizen bacillus,
Now that there are so many billions of you,
Bleeding through your opened veins,
Into your bathtub, or into the Pacific
Of that by which they may remember you.”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“You know Chad’s definition of the New Poor? People who are too far behind with time-payments on next year’s model to make the down-payment on the one for the year after?”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“Stand on Zanzibar is an information overload on topics that sensible people would never want to learn about.”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“Much earlier than Richardson, before World War I, in fact, Norman Angell had shown that the idea of fighting a war for profit was obsolete. The victors would pay a heavier cost than the losers. He was right, and that First World War proved the fact. The second one hammered it home with everything up to and including nuclear weapons. In an individual one would regard it as evidence of insanity to see someone repeatedly undertaking enterprises that resulted in his losing precisely what he claimed he was trying to achieve; it is not less lunatic to do it on the international scale, but if you’ve been catching the news lately you’ll have noticed it’s being done more than ever.”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
“COINCIDENCE You weren't playing attention to the other half of what was going on.”
― John Brunner, quote from Stand on Zanzibar
John Brunner
Born place: in Preston Crowmarsh, Oxfordshire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date September 24, 1934
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“You have what we in France call ‘good time teeth,’” she said. “Why on earth would you want to change them?” “Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe?”
― David Sedaris, quote from Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
“Always remember, difficult situations are thrust upon those who have the power to influence events.”
― T.A. Uner, quote from The Leopard Stratagem
“He says that all that happens when you go far, far away is that you discover you've brought yourself along.”
― Tom McNeal, quote from Far Far Away
“you can get past a mistake, but it's much harder to get past being a cruel person.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Thousand Words
“each hour is a room of shame, and I am
swimming, swimming, holding my head up,
smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed,
like being naked with the clothed, or being
a child, having to try to behave
while hating the terms of your life.”
― Sharon Olds, quote from Stag's Leap: Poems
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The Assassin and the...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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