# Quote — Jack Vance, The Killing Machine

> A detached attitude toward the problems of others is not illegal.

- Author: [Jack Vance](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance.md)
- Book: [The Killing Machine](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/the-killing-machine.md)
- Page: 180
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_Vance#The_Killing_Machine_(1964)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/the-killing-machine/a-detached-attitude

## More from this book

> “Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth—and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort....We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolute—is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.”

p. 179 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/the-killing-machine/humanity-is-old.md)

> The central problem, so it seemed, was to learn from whose eye he looked forth. Much, after all, would depend upon his viewpoint.

p. 282 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/the-killing-machine/the-central-problem.md)

> “And thereby hangs a tale,” as the monkey said while describing the cat’s rear-quarters.

p. 193 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-vance/the-killing-machine/and-thereby-hangs.md)