21 quotes
I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
Player Piano (1952)
"Things don't stay the way they are," said Finnerty. "It's too entertaining to try to change them."
Player Piano (1952)
And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.
Player Piano (1952)
Paul wondered at what thorough believers in mechanization most Americans were, even when their lives had been badly damaged by mechanization.
Player Piano (1952)
Everybody's shaking in his boots, so don't be bluffed.
Player Piano (1952)
"If only it weren't for the people, the goddamned people," said Finnerty, "always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren't for them, earth would be an engineer's paradise."
Player Piano (1952)
Almost nobody's competent, Paul. It's enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.
Player Piano (1952)
Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't — no matter when, no matter what.
Player Piano (1952)
Democracy owed its life to know-how.
Player Piano (1952)
The band at the far end of the hall, amplified to the din of an elephant charge, smashed and hewed at the tune as though in a holy war against silence.
Player Piano (1952)
Doctor Paul Proteus, son of a successful man, himself rich with prospects of being richer, counted his material blessings. He found that he was in excellent shape to afford integrity.
Player Piano (1952)
It was an appalling thought, to be so well-integrated into the machinery of society and history as to be able to move in only one plane, and along one line.
Player Piano (1952)
These displaced people need something, and the clergy can't give it to them—or it's impossible for them to take what the clergy offers. The clergy says it's enough, and so does the Bible. The people say it isn't enough, and I suspect they're right.
Player Piano (1952)
Anita had the mechanics of marriage down pat, even to the subtlest conventions. If her approach was disturbingly rational, systematic, she was thorough enough to turn out a credible counterfeit of warmth.
Player Piano (1952)
"Why are you quitting?"
"Sick of my job."
"Because what you were doing was morally bad?" suggested the voice.
"Because it wasn't getting anybody anywhere. Because it was getting everybody nowhere."
"Because it was evil?" insisted the voice.
"Because it was pointless."
Player Piano (1952)
You know, in a way I wish I hadn't met you two. It's much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.
Player Piano (1952)
In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people out of what was the most important thing on earth to them — the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect.
Player Piano (1952)
"This husband of yours, he'd rather have his wife a— Rather, have her—" Halyard cleared his throat— "than go into public relations?"
"I'm proud to say," said the girl, "that he's one of the few men on earth with a little self-respect left."
Player Piano (1952)
This silly playlet seemed to satisfy them completely as a picture of what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who was against them, and why some people were against them. It was a beautifully simple picture these procession leaders had. It was as though a navigator, in order to free his mind of worries, had erased all the reefs from his maps.
Player Piano (1952)
And as Paul said these things to himself, a wave of sadness washed over them as though they'd been written in sand. He was understanding now that no man could live without roots—roots in a patch of desert, a red clay field, a mountain slope, a rocky coast, a city street. In black loan, in mud or sand or rock or asphalt or carpet, every man had his roots down deep—in home.
Player Piano (1952)