Philip José Farmer

Quotes

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

   p. 339

2. 

   If the Creator has a plan for us, why doesn’t He tell us what it is? Are we so stupid that we can’t understand it? He should tell it to us directly! The books that the prophets, the revelators, and the revisionists wrote, claiming to have authority from God Himself, to have taken His dictations, these so-called revelations are false! They make no sense! Besides, they contradict each other! Does God make contradictory statements?

   p. 341

3. 

   How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs, not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children's books and by the child who'd inspired him.

   The little girl become a woman, dream-ridden Alice, had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiraling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world.

   p. 406

4. 

   Burton sighed. She was, on the whole, sane. But she was also a religious fanatic who managed to ignore the facts of life and also the contradictory elements in her faith.

   p. 327

5. 

   The truth is that you can be immortal, relatively so, anyway. You won't last beyond the death of the universe and probably not nearly as long as the universe does. But you have the potentiality for living a million years, two, perhaps three or more. As long as you can find a Terrestrial-type planet with a hot core and have resurrection machinery available.

   Unfortunately, not all can be permitted to possess immortality. Too many would make immortality miserable or hellish for the rest, and they would try to control others through their control of the resurrection machinery. Even so, everybody, without exception, is given a hundred years after his Earthly death to prove that he or she can live peacefully and in harmony with himself and the others, within the tolerable limits of human imperfections. Those who can do this will be immortal after the two projects are completed.

6. 

   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.

   p. 112

7. 

   By the Providence that did not exist, events had worked out perfectly.

   p. 247

8. 

   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.

   p. 371

9. 

   Imagination was the great cozener of the past.

   p. 430

10. 

    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.

    p. 265

11. 

    “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?”

    p. 73

12. 

    Take St. Augustine, for instance. "Asshole” was the only word that fit him. A monster of ego and selfishness.

    St. Francis was about as saintly as a person could be. But he was undoubtedly psychotic. Kissing a leper’s sores to demonstrate humility, indeed!

    p. 295