Quotes from Alfred Bester

With a heart of furious fancies Whereof I am commander, With a burning spear and a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander. With a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney, Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end — Methinks it is no journey. —TOM·A·BEDLAM

Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.

eÄŸer bir adam?n topluma kar?? gelecek yeteneÄŸi ve cesareti varsa, o, kesinlikle ortalaman?n üzerinde demektir. onu durdurmak istersiniz. onu düzeltir ve daha deÄŸerli bir hale dönüÅŸtürürsünüz, kazand?r?rs?n?z. ondan kim vazgeçebilir? bunu yapmay? yeterince sürdürürseniz, geriye sadece koyunlar kal?r.

Century also had shelves of obsolete printed books.

We prattle about free will, but we're nothing but response . . . mechanical reaction in prescribed grooves.

I picked up a rare disease called conscience .... That can often turn fatal.

It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief.

There is no sun.

He was afflicted with an education and a sense of humor. He was inspired by a purpose. He was armed with a phone book. He was doomed.

Millions for nonsense but not one cent for entropy.

A Snow Joint. Might have known he'd be running a dive for hop-heads too.' This joint catered to Disease Collectors, the most hopeless of neurotic-addicts. They lay in their hospital beds, suffering mildly from illegally induced para-measles, para-flu, para-malaria; devotedly attended by nurses in starched white uniforms, and avidly enjoying their illegal illness and the attention it brought.

It was an age of freaks, monsters, and grotesques. All the world was misshapen in marvelous and malevolent ways.

Through the vistas of the years every age but our own seems glamorous and golden. We yearn for the yesterdays and tomorrows, never realizing that we are faced with Hobson's Choice … that today, bitter or sweet, anxious or calm, is the only day for us. The dream of time is the traitor, and we are all accomplices to the betrayal of ourselves.

Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you!

A man is a member of society first, and an individual second. You must go along with society, whether it chooses destruction or not.

The man who upsets the morphology of society is a cancer. The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal.

Cellar Christians!" Foyle exclaimed. He and Robin peered through the window. Thirty worshippers of assorted faiths were celebrating the New Year with a combined and highly illegal service. The twenty-fifth century had not yet abolished God, but it had abolished organized religion.

The difference between a Welfare State and a Benevolent Despot is slight.

Tienes razón – dijo sin mirarla –. Soy venenoso... Pero te amo. Soy el hombre equivocado, pero te amo. Es muy pronto, sólo unas horas, pero te amo. Odio demasiado, lastimo demasiado porque soy venenoso... y te amo. Es mejor que me vaya. Buenas noches»

As a class they are lazy, irresponsible, immature. They are incapable of producing contemporary fiction because they know nothing about life, cannot reflect life, and have no adult comment to make about life. They are silly, childish people who have taken refuge in science fiction where they can establish their own arbitrary rules about reality to suit their own inadequacy. And like most neurotics, they cherish the delusion that they're special.

Any man was capable of jaunting provided he developed two faculties, visualization and concentration. He had to visualize, completely and precisely, the spot to which he desired to teleport himself; and he had to concentrate the latent energy of his mind into a single thrust to get him there. Above all, he had to have faith.

There was the taste of a strand of cool pearls in his mouth

So, in five seconds, he was born, he lived and he died. After thirty years of existence and six months of torture, Gully Foyle, the stereotype Common Man was no more. The key turned in the lock of his soul and the door was opened. What emerged expunged the Common Man for ever.

Don't you ever run away?' 'Never. Escape is for cripples. Neurotics.