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Urban folk, dealing as they do in ideas and abstractions, become conditioned to unreality. Then, wherever the fabric of civilization breaks, these people are as helpless as fish out of water.

— Jack Vance The Gray Prince (1975)

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More quotes by Jack Vance

My brain, otherwise a sound instrument, has a serious defect—a hypertrophied lobe of curiosity.

The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

Experience is the only source of wisdom: by which I mean, the competent conduct of life.

Maske: Thaery (1976)

Now, as to the persistence of superstition, only an impoverished mind considers itself the repository of absolute knowledge.

Future Tense (1964)

He used a name for himself, true, but we played at Romance, and this is a game where truth is a bagatelle.

Lyonesse Trilogy (1983)

“Everyone is the same,” he told himself. “Anxious to arrive and, when they leave, wondering why they came.”

Demon Princes (1964)

All Jack Vance quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jack Vance (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.