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John W. Campbell Quotes

1910–1971 United States

John Wood Campbell, Jr. (8 June 1910 – 11 July 1971) was an American science fiction editor and writer, known for his challenges to writers.

United States
Editors
Novelists
Science fiction authors
Short story writers

Random John W. Campbell quote

6 quotes

The world’s prize stupid oaf is the man who thinks he already has all the answers.

A successful crackpot is still a crackpot.

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club.

Analog Science Fiction/Fact magazine (1965)

The curve of progress in the physical sciences is, assuredly, still rising rapidly. But I wonder how fast the curve of human-effort-invested-per-discovery-achieved is rising?

Logic happens to be one of the levels of reality; ignoring it is perfectly possible, just as it is possible for a drunken driver to ignore the concrete-and-steel bridge abutment in his path. The difficulty is that logic—like the bridge-abutment—won’t ignore the individual man.

Hypnosis has been a seriously neglected factor of the human mind; now it must be attacked as a major engineering problem. For once, we have an aspect of the mind that ties directly into a solid engineering job; it will require that psychology submit to that harshest of all disciplines—the absolutely inflexible, utterly autocratic, uncompromisingly dogmatic discipline of “Does it work?”

Attribution

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