99 Quotes by Olaf Stapledon

How should the little creatures, the awakened worlds, reach out to knowledge of the whole cosmos, and of the divine? Instead they must play their own part in the drama, and appreciate their own tragic end with godlike detachment and relish.

The story of your species is indeed a tragic story, for it closes with desolation. Your part in that story is both to strive and to fail in a unique opportunity, and so to set the current of history toward disaster. But think not therefore that your species has occurred in vain, or that your own individual lives are futile. Whatever any of you has achieved of good is an excellence in itself, and a bright thread woven into the texture of the cosmos.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” – Albert Camus.

The precept, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” breeds in us most often the disposition to see one’s neighbor merely as a poor imitation of oneself, and to hate him if he proves different.

In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons you.

Once more I struck out into the ocean of space, heading for another near star. Once more I was disappointed.

The Tibetan missionaries in their mood of bright confidence disconcerted the imperial governments by laughing the new movement into frustration. For a sham faith cannot stand ridicule.

Without Satan, with God only, how poor a universe, how trite a music!

Barren, barren and trivial are these words.