George R. Stewart

Quotes

1. If there is a God who made us and we did wrong before His eyes—as George says—at least we did wrong only because we were as God made us, and I do not think that He should set traps. Oh, you should know better than George! Let us not bring all that back into the world again—the angry God, the mean God—the one who does not tell us the rules of the game, and then strikes us when we break them. Let us not bring Him back!

   p. 281

2. 

   “There are no atheists in foxholes,” he remembered, but the whole world now was nothing but a huge foxhole! But certainly what had happened did not inspire one to think that God was particularly interested in the human race, or in its individuals.

   p. 69

3. 

   The people who live in any generation do much, he realized, either to create or to solve the problems for the people who come in the generations later.

   p. 150

4. 

   A dead cat, it seemed, lay on the counter, but as he looked, it stirred to life and he realized that it had merely been lying, after the the habit of cats, in such a position that it looked dead. The cat looked at him with a kind of cold effrontery, as the duchess at the chambermaid. Ish felt uncomfortable, and had to remind himself that this was the way cats had always behaved.

   p. 30

5. 

   Suddenly he felt that all civilization depended not only upon men but also upon these other things which had marched with him like kinsman and friends and companions. If Saint Francis had hailed the sun as brother, might not we also say, “Oh, Brother Wheat! Oh, Sister Barley!” He smiled to himself. Yes, one could go on: “Oh, Grandfather Wheel! Oh, Cousin Compass! Oh, Friend Binomial Theorem!”

   p. 122

6. 

   People certainly tended to overestimate the intelligence of dogs!

   p. 10

7. 

   To think of that as something bad was merely to think in terms of what had once been and no longer existed.

   p. 95

8. 

   “Oh, don’t worry,” he thought, putting it into words, “there never had been perfection yet, and it certainly isn’t going to start now for me.”

   p. 105

9. 

   Yes, he realized, if a man began to think of himself as divinely appointed, he was close to thinking of himself as God—and at that point lay insanity.

   p. 38

10. 

    But, granting the numbers, the family group was just what it might have been at any time in almost any society—father, mother, and children, tightly grouped to form the basic social unit, so basic in fact that it might be considered biological rather than social. After all, he thought, the family was the toughest of all human institutions. It had preceded civilization, and so it naturally survived afterward.

    p. 170

11. 

    “It has never happened!” cannot be construed to mean, “It can never happen!”—as well say, “Because I have never broken my leg, my leg is unbreakable,” or “Because I’ve never died, I am immortal.”

    p. 8

12. 

    There had been many definitions of Man; he would make another: “The noise-producing animal.”

    p. 53