14 Quotes by James Edwin Gunn

Don’t get so holy, Pearce. Life isn’t holy.

Being in that room was like being inside a computer, a modern Jonah inside a great fish not yet born, and he was relieved when it opened a mouth and spat them out into an office.

You have spent your life among scholarly men of good will. To you the universe is a benevolent place; it has treated you with kindness, or, at least, neutrality. I have seen passion and malice and greed, and I know that intelligence is not necessarily benevolent; in fact, in my experience, it is more likely to be merely an instrument in the persistent search for advantage, in weighing profit and loss and finding a means of maximizing profit and minimizing loss.

Poverty and injustice are evils, but they are endurable evils in a world where other problems are greater. They are not endurable in a complex, technological society where cooperation is essential, where violence and rioting can destroy a city, even civilization itself.

The important task of government, you see, is to keep conditions stable, to hold down disturbances and unrest, to maintain itself, and the best way to do that is to give everybody the opportunity to do what they want – except change things.