144 quotes
Too far a retreat from reality is insanity.
Brain Wave (1954)
Corruption rewards its favorites with jobs.
There really wasn’t much in a man’s life that mattered. But those few things mattered terribly.
The Star Fox (1965)
I never set myself up as a prophet. Those crazy preachers have been the death of thousands, and the end is not yet.
As evil waxes, the very men who stand for good will in their fear use ever worse means o’ fighting, and thereby give evil a free beachhead.
Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961)
Timidity can be as dangerous as rashness.
The Saturn Game (1981)
“‘Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ Yeah, trouble is, the three classes of people aren’t the same.”
The air was cold and smelled of earth. Birds twittered. “Beyond one or two hundred years back,” Havig once said to me, “the daytime sky is always full of wings.”
There Will Be Time (1972)
What’s the point of our living all these centuries if we haven’t grown up even a little?
People usually take for granted that the way things are is the way things must be.
The Enemy Stars (1959)
At most, the gods gave only a little happiness; the rest was merely existence.
The Corridors of Time (1965)
Then he decided that nothing was more impractical than misplaced practicality.
The People of the Wind (1973)
That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world.
It would annoy me less that we’re heading into a new puritanical era if the puritanism concerned itself about things that matter.
On our Earth, we’ve perforce learned all the knavery there is to know.
The High Crusade (1960)
Did ignorance save his freedom, or merely his illusion of freedom?
There Will Be Time (1972)
Life was too short for anything but amusement at the human race.
The Enemy Stars (1959)
“Are you that afraid to die?”
“No. I simply like to live.”
Tau Zero (1970)
Mystery is in a way the guarantee of the boundlessness of the might of the ruler: power bound to reason must always have limitations, great though it may be.
The Book of Poul Anderson (1975)
Silence fell. The clock on my mantel ticked aloud and the wind outside flowed past like a river.
There Will Be Time (1972)