41 quotes
COINCIDENCE You weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
How do you whip up resentment against absentee landlords and pocketers of bribes when the highest ambition of the people is either to become the former or be in a position to receive the latter?
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Isn’t it typical? We train one man—one ordinary, inoffensive, retiring little man—to be an efficient killing machine and he kills the one person who stood a chance of saving us from ourselves!
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Faust felt like this. The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come and Faustus must be damned … How long did he buy with the currency of his soul — ten years?
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
So not only the world, but he himself, was different from what he had imagined.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
LEADERSHIP A form of self-preservation exhibited by people with autodestructive imaginations in order to ensure that when it comes to the crunch it’ll be someone else’s bones which go crack and not their own.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
I can make a guess. There’s going to be trouble. Come to think of it, that’s a safe catch-all prophecy. Whatever happens in present circumstances there’s going to be trouble.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
It's Supposed To Be Automatic But Actually You Have To Press This Button
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
"They surely are condemned to Hell
Who rule their lives by greed and lust
And Satan waits for those as well
Who in machines repose their trust."
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
“I don’t believe in God,” said the captain. “I wouldn’t care to believe in anyone who could make such a stinking lousy species as the one you belong to.”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
I can't see heaven but I credit hell —
I live in New York so I know it well.
When they shut out heaven with the Fuller Dome
God gave it up and He went home.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
LOGIC The principle governing human intellection. Its nature may be deduced from examining the following propositions, both of which are held by human beings to be true and often by the same people: “I can’t so you musn’t,” and “I can but you musn’t.”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
“How does it feel to have just changed the course of history?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the navigator. “To my way of thinking, by the time history happens I’m going to be dead.”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
“It would have been a longer and slower job, I’m sure, and probably there would have been a high price to pay. But what is the price of freedom?”
“What’s the price of life?” Donald countered bitterly.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Any society which gives lip-service to the idea of equal opportunity is going to generate jealousy of others who are better off than you are, even if the thing that’s in short supply can’t be carved up and shared without destroying it.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
They’d have me out and shoot me the first day they took charge. Anyone like me is intolerably subversive to an authoritarian régime, because I’m not interested in imposing my ideas by force on other people.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that’s processed by General Technics’ famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
In short order they fell into the same pit as their rivals, who had for decades ignored the plain and simple fact that to a starving man “freedom” implies a full rice-bowl—or, if he has an exceptional imagination, a healthy ox to pull his plough. It has nothing to do with voting for a political delegate.
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
“What are you going to do for a career?”
Diverted from his orbit, Donald binked. “Well, something which uses up a minimum of my time, I imagine. So I can use the rest to mortar up the gaps in my education.”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)