“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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“Your family is real, but mine isn't? Real people with real feelings, but my family isn't real to you. You think. I'm a character. A story. Those women you talk about. Not real people to you. Stupid women. I'm real. I'm as real as you are. My family is real like your family.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
“Everything is different and nothing is same in the universe.”
― Zaman Ali, quote from Humanity
“It is the Master who comes to the door of his student when the student is ready and the Master knows all the truth of his student”
― Kapil Kumar Bhaskar, quote from Reminiscences Of A Seeker: Dark Face Of The White World (True Story)
“I’m so lucky to have you, Leni,” Mama said, trying to organize her cards with one hand.
“We’re a team,” Leni said. “Peas in a pod.”
“Two of a kind.”
Words they said all the time to each other; words that felt a little hollow now. Maybe even sad.”
― Kristin Hannah, quote from The Great Alone
“He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it was an excellent idea. Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.
What he did was put the fear of God into them.
More precisely, the fear of Crowley.
In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt or browning, or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. "Say goodbye to your friend," he'd say to them. "He just couldn't cut it. . . "
Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.
The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Good Omens
The Bridge Across Fo...
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The Machine Stops
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