Quotes from Gordon R. Dickson

Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time's worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be.

The first rule of knife fighting," said Nick, "is—don't.

He had won. True enough, he had won over nothing more than shadows within him. Still, there was that same feeling that he had had after he had come successfully up through the cellar and past Wolf with the canned food in his arms, and the feeling following that evening in which Wolf had come to him in a new, strangely submissive manner. In both cases, he had known a feeling that he had passed some kind of watershed in his life.

It was the centuries-old battle of man to keep his race alive and push forward into the future, the ceaseless, furious struggle of that beastlike, god-like—primitive, sophisticated—savage and civilized—composite organism that was the human race fighting to endure and push onward. Onward, and up, and up again, until the impossible was achieved, all barriers were broken, all pains conquered, all abilities possessed. Until all was lightning and no darkness left.

It did not mean that the explanation was always immediately available. But nothing happened without a reason; particularly as far as the actions of the higher mammals were concerned. There had to be a cause for every action. That

the faithholder is his faith. He and it make, not two, but a single thing. Since he and it are one, there's no way to take it from him. That makes him a very powerful opponent. In fact, it makes him an unconquerable opponent; since even death can't touch him in his most important part.

You don't quench ambition by feeding it any more than you quench a fire the same way... To an ambitious man, what he already has is nothing. It's what he doesn't have that counts.

nearly half the half million were engaged in military occupations other than those of a fighting soldier or officer. And of the more than two hundred and fifty thousand men that this left technically available for active duty in the field, more than a hundred and fifty thousand at any one time were rendered—or managed to render themselves—ineffective through a variety of means and for a variety of causes.

there is no future—only the choice between the present as they want it or nothing at all. He and those like him lose nothing in their own terms by trading a future that is valueless for them for a here and now that sees them get what they want. But the real price of what they want is an end to all dreams—including

the contest that's now shaping up can only be won by those who believe in the future if they work and struggle as one single people.

there is no such a thing as an impossible, but only a thing the doing of which has not yet been learned.

His eyes were curiously deep, and a warm, gray color. His mouth was thin-lipped, but a little wide and altogether friendly. His light, straight brown hair was already receding at the temples. He wore it clipped short, and he would be nearly bald before his thirties were out, but since he was not the sort of man to whom good looks are necessary, this would make little difference.

Like most people who knew themselves to be naturally favored with intelligence, his natural ego had led him unconsciously to doubt that there was much, if any, range of intellect beyond his own. But he forced himself to consider now the possibility that there might be as large a range above him as he knew to be below him—and

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.

Now our world is at the present time firmly in the grip of a mechanical monster, whose head - if you want to call it that - is the World Engineer's Complex. That monster is opposed to us and can keep all too good a tab on us through every purchase we make with our credit numbers, every time we use the public transportation or eat a meal or rent a place to live.

Facing facts is definitely preferable to facing defeat.

There never was a throne yet built so high that it could not be rocked by laughter from below.

Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time's worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be.

John Le Carre said that authenticity is less important than plausibility.

More blood's been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man.

Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?

Onward, and up, and up again, until the impossible was achieved, all barriers were broken, all pains conquered, all abilities possessed. Until all was lightning and no darkness left.

I'm not an expert," said Cletus. "I'm a scholar. There's a difference. An expert's a man who knows a great deal about his subject. A scholar's someone who knows all there is that's available to be known about it.