14 Quotes by Pierre Boulle

But once an original book has been written-and no more than one or two appear in a century-men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators, provided, of course, that they are able to make use of language.

In the field of technology, simplification is always an enormous advance...

To rise from the national level to the level of mankind, I call that progress. And that's what's so admirable. For a man to progress, once he has reached the White House-I wouldn't have thought it possible.

When, in the fifteenth century, some audacious mariners who had sailed from Europe discovered America, nothing seemed to justify such a venture in the eyes of their contemporaries. Today, however, we can see it has given birth to the twentieth-century United States. Don't you think the existence of the United States constitutes a valid reason for Columbus's wild scheme...

You can ask a President to provide for two years ahead, maybe for twenty or even thirty years, but not for two hundred or a thousand!

... the heritage of mankind is not the earth but the entire universe,

The man who eventually reached the moon would be traveling in a vessel made of earthly materials.

No country in the world can continue to spend what we are sacrificing for the moon without rapidly being reduced to utter ruin.

The moon, the serene moon, was creating a conflict of opinion in America almost as violent as the racial problem.