Jack Vance

I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.

Candor is never indiscreet. Truth, which is to say, the reflection of life, is beautiful.

“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.”

“Beauty comes in often to drink. A spaceman, he claims himself, but as to this I can’t be certain. I have often declared myself a great lover. All of us lie, as much or more than necessary. ‘What is truth?’ asks Pons Pilatus, in the fable, and I answer: ‘A commodity as cheap as air which we hide as if it were as precious as yewl stone.’”

Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.

“Everyone is the same,” he told himself. “Anxious to arrive and, when they leave, wondering why they came.”

Revenge is not an ignoble motive, when it works to a productive end.

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

The tighter the discipline of an art form, the more subjective the criteria of taste.

Conjecture without facts was useless; he must deal with events as they occurred.

Money lost, little lost.

Honor lost, much lost.

Pluck lost, all lost.

There are also those who, like the author, ensconce themselves on a thunderous crag of omniscience, and with protestations of humility which are either unconvincing or totally absent, assume the obligation of appraisal, commendation, derogation or denunciation of their contemporaries. Still, by and large it is an easier job than digging a ditch.