Philip José Farmer

Quotes

1. “We’re not that stupid!”

   “No, but you’re that impulsive. Which is a form of stupidity.”

   p. 402

2. 

   “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

3. 

   Sometimes I regret we are forbidden any violence whatsoever. Right now, I would like to kick you in the ass.

   p. 113

4. 

   Malory clung to his faith with fierce obliviousness to “facts”—in itself an indication that he had gone mad, if his critics were to be believed.

   p. 8

5. 

   You should have waited to find out the true situation, madame. But then…scarcely anyone ever does.

   p. 273

6. 

   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

7. 

   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

8. 

   Monasticism, retreat from the world, reclusivism, that’s a lot of crap.

   p. 112

9. 

   If you live very long time or are immortal, perhaps you learn everything about everything in order to pass the time.

   p. 102

10. 

    “What does that mean?”

    “I don’t know, but it sounds deep. I’ll think up an explanation later.”

    p. 144

11. 

    I have been forced into this situation and may like it. To survive you must lie better than the liars, deceive more than the deceivers, and kill the killers first! To me it’s sheer necessity, though justified!

    p. 18

12. 

    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