Quotes from John Kilian Houston Brunner

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

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

One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It's of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it's very important to a person.

It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.

First we had the legs race. Then we had the arms race. Now we're going to have the brain race. And, if we're lucky, the final stage will be the human race.

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

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

LOGIC The principle governing human intellection. Its nature may be deduced from examining the following propositions, both of which are held by human beings to be true and often by the same people: I cant so you musnt, and I can but you musnt.

I just havent been conditioned into thinking that the right answer cant be a simple one. When I told you youd been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong?

I can at least comfort myself with the idea that whatever Ive done Ive helped to nail a lie, and Im coming to think that lying is among the worst of all human failings. Next to actual killing. And experience has made us almost equally good at both of them. I have killed many people and seen many more killed on my orders, Jogajong said. It is what must be paid to buy what we want. What weve been told we want, by liars more skilled than ourselves.

It would have been a longer and slower job, Im sure, and probably there would have been a high price to pay. But what is the price of freedom? Whats the price of life? Donald countered bitterly.

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

UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didnt manage.

SHALMANESER That real cool piece of hardware up at the GT tower. They say he's apt to evolve to true consciousness one day. Also they say he's as intelligent as a thousand of us put together, which isn't really saying much, because when you put a thousand of us together look how stupidly we behave.

They surely are condemned to Hell Who rule their lives by greed and lust And Satan waits for those as well Who in machines repose their trust.

In an individual one would regard it as evidence of insanity to see someone repeatedly undertaking enterprises that resulted in his losing precisely what he claimed he was trying to achieve; it is not less lunatic to do it on the international scale, but if youve been catching the news lately youll have noticed its being done more than ever.

Theyd have me out and shoot me the first day they took charge. Anyone like me is intolerably subversive to an authoritarian rgime, because Im not interested in imposing my ideas by force on other people.

I can't see heaven but I credit hell I live in New York so I know it well. When they shut out heaven with the Fuller Dome God gave it up and He went home.

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

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

NEGRO Member of a subgroup of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamednot by its residentsAfrica. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis.

What are you going to do for a career? Diverted from his orbit, Donald binked. Well, something which uses up a minimum of my time, I imagine. So I can use the rest to mortar up the gaps in my education.

COINCIDENCE You werent paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

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