Philip José Farmer

“Perhaps God—if there is one—doesn’t care,” Burton said. “There is no evidence whatsoever that He does.”

Sometimes you are arrogant, thinking you are better than others. More often you are humble. Too humble. I might even say, sickeningly humble. That is another form of arrogance. True humility is knowing your true place in the cosmic scale.

I had the honor to serve at the siege of Arras. Where I received a thrust through the throat, the second of the serious wounds that convinced me, along with all else I had seen of wars miseries and horrors, that Mars was the stupidest of the gods.

Imagination was the great cozener of the past.

As for the Bible, it was a book, and all books told the truth in the sense that their authors believed they were writing a kind of truth.

“You must not stereotype!” Cyrano cried.

“And you are right,” she said. “That is a feeling I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often…well, most people are living stereotypes, aren’t they?”

He seemed to get along with just about everybody. Which, in my book, makes him suspect.

Peter would find out that that was superstition, a reasoning from effect to cause, totally invalid. It was in a class with the belief that if you eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while you were sitting in the outhouse, the devil would get you.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll listen to the wise. Are you wise?”

“Wise enough,” he said, “and mighty experienced, which is the same thing if you’re not too stupid.”

I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman.

But he’s sincere. Which doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about.

“I don’t believe in women’s intuition,” Sam said. “They’re just culturally conditioned to observe different patterns of action and speech, different gestures and inflections from those men observe. They’re more sensitive to certain subtleties because of this conditioning.”