14 quotes
Losing power, utterly and completely, is the most dreadful prospect that a politician can think of. It overshadows everything else.
The Black Cloud (1957)
It’s only too easy to read your own state of mind into what other people say.
The Black Cloud (1957)
The two men were mentally too dissimilar for more than a half hour of conversation between them to be possible.
The Black Cloud (1957)
“I’m still waiting to hear how I should have compromised. Are you sure that ‘compromise’ and ‘capitulate’ are not synonymous in your vocabulary?”
The Black Cloud (1957)
I will say this for you, Chris. I never knew anyone who was better at finding work for other people.
The Black Cloud (1957)
“Not everyone views the government with quite the same disrespect that you do.”
“No, more’s the pity.”
The Black Cloud (1957)
Ifs and buts are the stuff of politics, Mr. Parkinson. As a scientist I am concerned with facts not with motives, suspicions, and airy-fairy nothingness.
The Black Cloud (1957)
Before anyone starts criticising, let me say that I know it’s a preposterous idea and I wouldn’t suggest it for a moment if the alternative weren’t even more outrageously preposterous.
The Black Cloud (1957)
The policy was to keep everything in watertight compartments. In the interests of security, they said, but more likely in the interests of inefficiency.
The Black Cloud (1957)
Once the spark was struck the story would spread like wildfire, and would be in the papers in next to no time. The Director had never had any cause to think highly of newspaper reporters, particularly of their scientific accuracy.
The Black Cloud (1957)
It isn’t the Universe that’s following our logic, it’s we that are constructed in accordance with the logic of the Universe. And that gives what I might call a definition of intelligent life: something that reflects the basic structure of the Universe.
The Black Cloud (1957)
“But I can’t go along and gatecrash.”
“Nonsense, of course you can come—a guest from England! You’ll be the lion of the party. Probably half a dozen film moguls from Hollywood will want to sign you up on the spot.”
“All the more reason for not going,” said Kingsley.
The Black Cloud (1957)
Lives loss through an ‘act of God’ are regretted, perhaps deeply regretted, but they do not arouse our wildest passions. It is otherwise with lives that are forfeited through deliberate human agency. The word ‘deliberate’ is important here. One deliberate murder can produce a sharper reaction than ten thousand deaths on the roads.
The Black Cloud (1957)
“By and large, conventional religion, as many humans accept it, is illogical in its attempt to conceive of entities lying outside the Universe. Since the Universe comprises everything, it is evident that nothing can lie outside it. The idea of a ‘god’ creating the Universe is a mechanistic absurdity clearly derived from the making of machines by men. I take it that we are in agreement about all this.”
The Black Cloud (1957)