Harry Harrison

Quotes

1. The crossbows twanged like harps of death.

   p. 154

2. 

   Their personal policy has become their planetary policy—and that’s never a very smart thing.

3. 

   You must realize that living organisms will do anything to survive. Castaways at sea will drink their own urine in their need for water. Disgust at this is only the attitude of the overprotected who have never experienced extreme thirst or hunger.

4. 

   The final product is a man-plant-animal symbiote that is admirably adapted for survival on this disaster world. No emotions to cause complications or desires that might interfere with pure survival. Complete ruthlessness—mankind has always been strong on this anyway, so it didn’t take much of a push.”

5. 

   With a mental effort, he grabbed hold of his thoughts and braked them to a stop. There was something new here, factors he hadn't counted on. He kept reassuring himself there was an explanation for everything, once you had your facts straight.

   p. 85

6. 

   Just because you know a thing is true in theory, doesn't make it true in fact. The barbaric religions of primitive worlds hold not a germ of scientific fact, though they claim to explain all. Yet if one of these savages has all the logical ground for his beliefs taken away — he doesn't stop believing. He then calls his mistaken beliefs 'faith' because he knows they are right. And he knows they are right because he has faith. This is an unbreakable circle of false logic that can't be touched. In reality, it is plain mental inertia. A case of thinking 'what always was' will also 'always be.' And not wanting to blast the thinking patterns out of the old rut.

   p. 151

7. 

   How large was mankind’s sense of obligation? The caveman first had this feeling for his mate, then for his family. It grew until men fought and died for the abstract ideas of cities and nations, then for whole planets. Would the time ever come when men might realize that the obligation should be to the largest and most encompassing reality of all—mankind? And beyond that to life of all kinds.

8. 

   I have done more in one day than you all have done since you arrived. I have accomplished this because I am better at my work than the rest of you. That is all the information any of you are going to receive. You are dismissed.

9. 

   "What about it, Meta?" he snapped. "No doubts? Do you think that destruction is the only way to end this war?"

   "I don't know," she said. "I can't be sure. For the first time in my life I find myself with more than one answer to the same question."

   "Congratulations," he said. "It's a sign of growing up."

   p. 113

10. 

    There are far too many people there for comfort. Birth control came late and is still being fought—if you can possibly imagine that. There are just too many of the archaic religions still around, as well as crackbrained ideas that have been long entrenched in custom. The world’s overcrowded. Men, women, children, a boiling mob wherever you look.

That’s all the quotes.

10 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more