87 Quotes by Clifton Fadiman

Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future.

What is a sense of humor? Surely not the ability to understand a joke. It comes rather from a residing feeling of one's own absurdity. It is the ability to understand a joke, and that the joke is on oneself.

Muhammad Ali: Superman Don't need no seat belt. Flight Attendant: Superman Don't need no airplane, either.

I found nothing really wrong with this autobiography except poor choice of subject.

Reading is not an operation performed on something inert but a relationship entered into with another vital being.

Liquor is not a necessity. It is a means of momentarily sidestepping necessity.

The only reason for being young is to outgrow it.

There is no reader so parochial as the one who reads none but this morning's books. Books are not rolls, to be devoured only when they are hot and fresh. A good book retains its interior heat and will warm a generation yet unborn.

We prefer to think that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has forgotten its source.