70 Quotes by Robert Sheckley

A great majority of Terrans were idealists, and they believed fervently in concepts such as truth, justice, mercy, and the like. And not only did they believe, they also let those noble concepts guide their actions – except when it would be inconvenient or unprofitable. When that happened, they acted expediently, but continued to talk moralistically. This meant that they were “hypocrites” – a term which every race has its counterpart of.

The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens’ eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here.

Dramocles got up from the operating table thinking he had just had a massage, and now wanted to take a brisk walk. A posthypnotic command took him a hundred yards from Fish’s laboratory. Then he heard the explosion. Hurrying back, he saw that Dr. Fish had been blown up. Dramocles couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to blow up an inoffensive android like Fish. He never considered the possibility that he had done it himself, since exploded androids tell no tales.

As far as the mechanics go, working with other people on received ideas was for me a very interesting technical problem. I can’t say that any of my collaborations engaged my heart, but they engaged the craftsman in me.

Love and war,” he said, “are Earth’s two staple commodities. We’ve been turning them both out in bumper crops since the beginning of time.

What was I supposed to do? Was I meant to be nothing but God? I had tried the God business and found it too limited. It was a job for a simple-minded egomaniac. There had to be something else for me to do – something more meaningful, more expressive of my true self. I am convinced of it! That is my problem, and that is the question I ask of you: What am I to do with myself?

He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable – a routine miracle.

An error which is not perpetuated cannot be viewed as any error at all.

These two races hunted each other, lived and died for each other, and, through ignorance or guile, ignored any relationship between each other. The relationship was utterly symbiotic, but completely unacknowledged by either race. In fact, each race pretended that it alone was a Civilized Intelligence, and that the other was bestial, contemptible, and of no account. And it now occured to both of themthat they were, in equal measure, participants in the general concept of Humanity.