John Brunner Quotes

It's supposed to be automatic but actually you have to press this button.

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

After all, the rich get richer and the poor get children. Which is okay so long as lots of them starve in infancy.

What in Gods name is it worth to be human, if we have to be saved from ourselves by a machine?

To go faster you must slow down.

There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better.

If the evidence says you're wrong, you don't have the right theory. You change the theory, not the evidence.

What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.

How do you whip up resentment against absentee landlords and pocketers of bribes when the highest ambition of the people is either to become the former or be in a position to receive the latter?

"Pay him what was promised", said the caliph. "And put out his eyes."

Let's all be different same as me.

You have many years to live do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.

It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.

to travel faster than a speeding bullet is not much help if you and it are heading straight towards each other

Christ, what an imagination I've got!

Who should know better than a cosmetician that human beings are less than rational creatures?

It's common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it were on your side and not theirs.

People who hate in concrete terms are dangerous. People who manage to hate only in abstracts are the ones worth having for your friends.

Don't bother explaining--I've heard all the excuses and the trouble is most of them are true.

Rumors that the sun is out at Santa Ynez are without foundation," the radio said.

I can't see heaven but I credit hell I live in New York so I know it well. When they shut out heaven with the Fuller Dome God gave it up and He went home.

UNFAIR :; Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn't manage.

Yes, for most people nowadays television is their only contact with the world beyond their work.

I'm myself, not a label.

We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better.

Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.

For all the claims one hears about the liberating impact of the data-net, the truth is that it's wished on most of us a brand-new reason for paranoia.

Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I knew people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.

First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.

Love and joy are incredibly habit-forming; often a single exposure is enough to cause permanent addiction.

The same computers that make it impossible for you to cheat on your income tax can ensure that the blood of your group is in the ambulance that picks you up from a car smash.

The killers are the people who are ruining the world to line their pockets, poisoning us, burying us under garbage!

It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.

You will die, and I, and all we can create—why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge.

It's common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it was on your side and not theirs.