The Dark Design

Name: The Dark Design
Author: Philip José Farmer

Philip José Farmer

Quotes

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
The Dark Design
Imagination was the great cozener of the past.
p. 430
The Dark Design
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
The Dark Design
“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
The Dark Design
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
The Dark Design
He seemed to get along with just about everybody. Which, in my book, makes him suspect.
p. 400
The Dark Design
Kazz thought that putting a lump on Oskas’ head was very funny. He would have considered it to be even a better joke if the chief had drowned. Yet, among his crewmates, he was as sociable, tender, and compassionate a man as anyone could ask for. He was a primitive, and all primitives, civilized or preliterate, were tribal people. Only the tribe consisted of human beings and were treated as such. All outside the tribe though some might be considered friends, were not quite human. Therefore, they did not have to be treated as if they were completely human.
p. 130
The Dark Design
Suddenly, he was weeping. The tears were for the good things that had been or might have been, for the bad things that had been but should not have been.
p. 431
The Dark Design
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.
p. 291
The Dark Design
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.
p. 191
The Dark Design
But he’s sincere. Which doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about.
p. 256
The Dark Design
“At least, they tried,” Johnston said.
“So did the eunuch in the sheik’s harem.”
p. 396
The Dark Design
“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.”
p. 396
The Dark Design
“We’re not that stupid!”
“No, but you’re that impulsive. Which is a form of stupidity.”
p. 402
The Dark Design
“The trouble with you, Peter—one of the troubles—is you worry too much about other people’s behavior. And you have too high ideals for them, ideals which you yourself don’t try to live up to.”
“I know I can’t live up to them, so I make a no pretense,” Frigate said.
“But it bothers me that others claim to have these ideals and to be living up to them. If I point out that they aren’t, they get angry.”
The little Moor chuckled. “Naturally. Your criticism threatens their self-image. If that were to be destroyed, they, too, would be destroyed. At least, they think so.”
p. 297
The Dark Design
Burton thought the man was crazy, though he was discreet enough not to say so. He and his crew had fallen into the hands of fanatics. Fortunately, the god had told Metusael that his worshipers must hurt no one unless it was in self-defense. However, he knew from experience that “self-defense” could mean whatever a person or group wanted it to mean.
p. 104
The Dark Design
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in our lousy genes. Or in the failure of one’s conquest of one’s self.
The fault, dear Brutus, is in our fear of knowing ourselves.
p. 171
The Dark Design
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds deep. I’ll think up an explanation later.”
p. 144
The Dark Design
People who believed in Him were deluded. The believers in God might be intelligent, but they were mentally benighted. The gears in that part of the brain which dealt with religion had been put into neutral, and they were spinning. Or the circuit of religion had been disconnected from the main circuit of the intellect.
That was a bad analogy. People use their intellect to justify the nonintellective, emotionally based phenomenon called religion. Often brilliantly. But, as far as she was concerned, uselessly.
p. 93
The Dark Design
TV, the worst thing that had happened to the twentieth century. After the atom bomb and overpopulation, of course.
p. 186
The Dark Design
Anyway, women are about as mysterious as a tin mine. All you have to do is carry a lantern into the dark places, and you see everything. But men like to think women are the eternally mysterious. That saves men the trouble of asking questions, taking a little time and effort.
p. 398
The Dark Design
You prize rank too highly.
p. 231
The Dark Design
Beauty is beautiful because it is doomed to perish!
p. 448
The Dark Design
Then she warned her self—for the ten thousandth time?—that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment.
p. 69
The Dark Design
The religions of Jesus, Paul, and Buddha had started to degenerate before their founders were cold in their graves. Just as St. Francis’ order had begun corrupting before its founder’s body was rotten.
p. 296
The Dark Design
He looks like he’d be a hellcat in a fight. Tom and I agreed that he was easily the best qualified. But he doesn’t know anything about books, and I need educated people around me. That may sound snobbish, but so what?
p. 194
The Dark Design
Chance, another word for destiny.
p. 289
The Dark Design
If you’ve read your history…then you’ll know that the medieval noblemen were notorious for treachery. Their god was Opportunity, no matter how many churches they built for the glory of Church and God. They had all the morals of a hyena.
p. 391
The Dark Design
“I thought that was just one of the wild tales those visionaries had invented,” Jill said. “I didn’t put any more credence in it than I did in the ravings of Earth prophets. Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Buddha, Smith, Eddy, the whole sick crew.”
p. 375
The Dark Design
Was destiny anything but chance? Probably. But the odds against this happening on Earth were infinity to one.
p. 302
The Dark Design
I, who hated the fat, smug, oily, stinking, ignorant, hypocritical, parasitical priests! And their unfeeling, merciless, cruel God!
p. 200
The Dark Design
Dreams haunted The Riverworld.
p. 1
The Dark Design
Tell me, is this true or is it just one of those tales that people like to make up to worry others?
p. 19
The Dark Design
Nightmare in paradise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on make in a hell of it.
p. 64
The Dark Design
“Would you like to talk?”
“When I dream, I am talking.”
“But to yourself.”
“Who knows me better?” He laughed softly.
“And who can deceive you better,” she said a little tartly.
p. 10
The Dark Design
Many attributed this to a supernatural agency. Many more, among whom was Burton, did not think that there was any agency except an advanced science which accounted for this. There was no need to call in the supernatural. “No ghosts need apply,”—to quote the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Physical explanations sufficed.
p. 19
The Dark Design

That’s all the quotes.

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