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Quotes from Stand on Zanzibar — John Brunner

1934–1995 England

← All quotes by John Brunner

41 quotes

You have many years to live—do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

We’re aware of the scale of the planet, so we don’t accept that our own circumscribed horizons constitute reality. Much more real is what’s relayed to us by the TV.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

HIPCRIME You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

What in God’s name is it worth to be human, if we have to be saved from ourselves by a machine?

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Who should know better than a cosmetician that human beings are less than rational creatures?

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn’t manage.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Nothing short of religion could persuade a normal girl to make herself look so awful.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

I never thought of asking anyone to do it for me. Something’s wrong with me. In a time of trouble should people not be able to ask help without feeling demeaned?

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

We’ve always cared more about property rights than human rights in this country. You should know that.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“I think,” Chad grunted, “that if he [Shalmaneser, the computer] really is intelligent nobody will recognise the fact. Because we aren’t.”

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

I love the place, and when they get love down to a bunch of factors you can analyse with a computer there’ll be nothing left of whatever makes it worth being human!

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

You don’t have to know everything. You simply need to know where to find it when necessary.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Ah, go to hell!”
“That’s a remarkably Christian attitude, Donald. Both meaningless and barbaric.”

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

If the evidence says you’re wrong, you don’t have the right theory. You change the theory, not the evidence.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

He had decided it was better to be a volcano than a man; at least one set no store by what one’s acts destroyed.

Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Brunner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.