# Quote — Clifford D. Simak, All Flesh is Grass

> They would fail. We would always fail. We weren’t built to do anything but fail. We had the wrong kind of motives and we couldn’t change them. We had a built-in short-sightedness and an inherent selfishness and a self-concern that made it impossible to step out of the little human rut we traveled.

- Author: [Clifford D. Simak](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak.md)
- Book: [All Flesh is Grass](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/all-flesh-is-grass.md)
- Page: 195
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clifford_D._Simak#All_Flesh_is_Grass_(1965)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/all-flesh-is-grass/they-would-fail

## More from this book

> We feel much sorrow for you, the elm tree had said. But what kind of sorrow—a real and sincere sorrow, or the superficial and pedantic sorrow of the immortal for a frail and flickering creature that was about to die?

p. 247 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/all-flesh-is-grass/we-feel-much.md)

> What strange circumstances, or what odd combination of many circumstances, must occur, I wondered, to make it possible for a man to step from one world to another.

p. 105 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/all-flesh-is-grass/what-strange-circumstances.md)

> “They’re just ordinary people,” Nancy said. “You can’t expect too much of them.”

p. 179 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clifford-d-simak/all-flesh-is-grass/theyre-just-ordinary.md)