Quotes from The Shockwave Rider

“There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“Damn right I voted for him. But if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn't have cast a vote—I’d have cast a brick.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“…as though, capable themselves of suffering, they granted no reality to the suffering of others. ‘The subject exhibited a pain response.’ But not, under any circumstances, we hurt her.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“After all, the rich get richer and the poor get children. Which is okay so long as lots of them starve in infancy.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with. So SHUT UP, do you hear me? SHUT UP!”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“Toffler’s Law, I guess: the future arrives too soon and in the wrong order.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“Best if the driver didn't have to get hurt. Though having been fool enough to volunteer for army service, of course, and worse still, having been fool enough to accept orders unquestioningly from a machine...
But everybody did that. Everybody, all the time. Otherwise none of this would have been possible.
Similarly, none of it would have had to happen.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“It was also not difficult to forecast that no matter how well endowed they were with material resources those countries where the Industrial Revolution arrived late would change proportionately more slowly. After all, the rich get richer and the poor get children.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“the plight of being old: clearly recalling what it was like to act voluntarily and enjoy life as it came, now trapped in a frame that forbade anything except slow cautious movements”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“Few of us are equipped to cope with the complexity and dazzling variety of twenty-first-century existence.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“our threshold of survival-prone behavior is so high it takes the prospect of total extermination to activate modes of placation and compromise, may there not be other processes, equally life-preserving, which can similarly be triggered off only at a far higher level of stimulus”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“In an age when we have more choice than ever before, more mobility, more information, more opportunity to fulfill ourselves, how is it that people can prefer to be identical?”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“There are two kinds of fool. One says, ‘This is old, and therefore good.’ And one says, ‘This is new, and therefore better.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“I am I.” “Tat tvam asi.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“But the habit patterns, inevitably, had survived. To the air, with a wry grin, he murmured, “How long, O Lord? How long?” In his private estimation: not long now.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“It’s the social counterpart of natural selection. Those groups within society that craved power at the expense of everything else—morality, self-respect, honest friendship—they achieved dominance long ago. The mass of the public no longer has any contact with government; all they know is that if they step out of line they’ll be trodden on.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“The explosion of human knowledge has accelerated to the point where even the most brilliant can’t cope with it any more. Theories have rigidified into dogma just as they did in the Middle Ages. The leading experts feel obligated to protect their creed against the heretics.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“You know, that’s what’s wrong with us on the public level. We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better. Our society is hurtling in free fall toward heaven knows where,”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“It’s the beginning of wisdom when you admit you’ve gone astray.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“We know, we feel in our guts, that decisions are constantly being made which are going to wreck our ambitions, our dreams, our personal relationships. But the people making those decisions are keeping them secret, because if they don’t they’ll lose the leverage they have over their subordinates.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“I'm proud of it. Apart from marking the first occasion when I used my talent on behalf of other people without being asked and without caring whether I was rewarded--which was a major breakthrough in itself--the job was a pure masterpiece. Working on it, I realized in my guts how an artist or an author can get high on the creative act. The poker who wrote Precipice's original tapeworm was pretty good, but you could theoretically have killed it without shutting down the net--that is, at the cost of losing thirty or forty billion bits of data. Which I gather they were just about prepared to do when I showed up. But mine...Ho, no! That, I cross my heart, cannot be killed without DISMANTLING the net.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“How right you are.” She shivered. “Some of my colleagues at G2S, you know, live at Trianon, where they test new life-styles. And they boast about how their actions are monitored night and day, compare the advantages of various ultramodern bugs … I don’t know how they can stand it.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“I put it to you that no rule consciously invented by mankind since we acquired speech has force equivalent to those inherited from perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred thousand generations of evolution in the wild state. I further suggest that the chief reason why modern society is in turmoil is that for too long we claimed that our special human talents could exempt us from the heritage written in our genes.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“I find no evidence for believing that I matter any more than any other human being who ever existed or who ever will exist. Nor does any of them matter more than I do. We’re elements in a process that began in the dim past and will develop through who knows what kind of future.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“intelligence and wisdom aren’t the same.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“when you think about the history of liberty. It’s the story of how principle has gradually been elevated above the whim of tyrants. When the law was defined as more powerful than the king, that was one great breakthrough.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

“a sneaking feeling that people are wrong when they say human beings can’t keep track of the world any more, we have to leave it up to the machines.”
― John Brunner, quote from The Shockwave Rider

About the author

Popular quotes

“The more I study the works of men in their institutions, the more clearly I see that, in their efforts after independence, they become slaves, and that their very freedom is wasted in vain attempts to assure its continuance. That they may not be carried away by the flood of things, they form all sorts of attachments; then as soon as they wish to move forward they are surprised to find that everything drags them back. It seems to me that to set oneself free we need do nothing, we need only continue to desire freedom.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quote from Emile or On Education

“SEA OF LIFE

This is not the end, my friend.
Just as the ocean sings songs to infinity
Our friendship too will flow onward
Until the day one of us
Turns and leaves
And the seasons will turn too
As our shells
As they return back to sand
And the tides that brought us
Forth
Will take us back
Again.

I will never leave you, my friend.
Every time you see a wave rushing to
Meet another,
Two friends unite.
Every time you see a wave crashing,
Two friends depart.
The journey will go on, my friend.
Our memories are recorded
In seashells
To show and tell
The lessons learned
In these heavens and hells
Part of this sea of life -
And when the tide is right,
We shall cross paths again
When the ocean sings our song.

Poetry by Suzy Kassem”
― quote from Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“The excitement of opportunity and challenge inspires us to push for greatness.”
― Lorii Myers, quote from Targeting Success, Develop the Right Business Attitude to be Successful in the Workplace

“Jeremy fixed her with a dark look, full of reproach. A hot blush singed the tips of her opal-adorned ears. For a moment, Lucy felt as though she were sitting in the breakfast room wearing only her nightgown—or less. But if he meant to shame her, he would be sorely disappointed. Her lips tingled, and she slowly wet them with her tongue before flashing him a bold grin. He quickly looked away.
Oh, what fun it was to vex him. He made it so easy to do. Hunting and fishing were all welland good, but truly, Jemmy-baiting had always been her favorite autumn sport. Lucy viewedhis staid countenance as an unending challenge. A smooth, thick-shelled egg that begged to be cracked. Any rearrangement of his features constituted a victory, be it a wince, a scowl, or that rarest of expressions—a smile. A smile that showed teeth counted double.Last night had shown her an entirely new way to bedevil Jeremy Trescott. Not with girlish pranks, but with womanly wiles. Oh, yes. She
‟
d cracked the egg last night, but good. Hisexpression of befuddled desire was far more amusing than a wince or a scowl, or even asmile that showed teeth. That last kiss had to count at least ten.She lifted her cup of chocolate to her lips. Closing her eyes, she pressed her tongue againstthe cool china rim, remembering the power of a proper kiss. Drinking in the hot, sweetrichness, feeling delicious warmth spread down her throat and pool in her belly. And lower.She sighed into the cup. If Jeremy
‟
s kiss could rival chocolate, Lucy shivered to imaginehow it would be to kiss—”
― Tessa Dare, quote from Goddess of the Hunt

“...compulsive eating is basically a refusal to be fully alive. No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul. We refuse to take in what sustains us. We live lives of deprivation. And when we can't stand it any longer, we binge. The way we are able to accomplish all of this is by the simple act of bolting -- of leaving ourselves -- hundreds of times a day.”
― Geneen Roth, quote from Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

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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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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