Skip to content

Quotes from City — Clifford D. Simak

1904–1988 United States

← All quotes by Clifford D. Simak

7 quotes

These are the stories the Dogs tell, when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north.

City (1952)

Individualists would have little use for a device which would make them understand one another, for they would not care whether they understood one another.

City (1952)

Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it.

City (1952)

These people must be helped to find themselves in this new world, but they must not know that they’re being helped. To let them know would destroy confidence and dignity, and human dignity is the keystone of any civilization.

City (1952)

To cover up actual lack of knowledge, the tale develops an explanation which amounts to divine intervention. It is an easy and, to the primitive mind, a plausible and satisfactory way to explain something of which nothing at all is known.

City (1952)

What is a bow and arrow?
It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war.
It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering.
It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb.
It is a symbol of a way of life.

City (1952)

The past, he said. The past is too much with me. And the past has made me useless. I have too much to remember—so much to remember that it becomes more important than the things there are to do. I’m living in the past and that is no way to live.

City (1952)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Clifford D. Simak (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.