# Robert Sheckley

- Quotes: 21
- Author page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-sheckley

## Books

- [Dimension of Miracles](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-sheckley/dimension-of-miracles.md) — 16 quotes
- [Untouched By Human Hands](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-sheckley/untouched-by-human-hands.md) — 5 quotes

## Recently added quotes

> A malfunction of this type can be cured only by changing the nature of the universe, which is, of course, impractical.

p. 34

> Remember, similitude need not imply exactitude.

p. 159

> The only thing to think over was Me, of course. And the real problem about Me was, What was I supposed to do? Was I meant to be nothing but God? I had tried the God business and found it too limited. It was a job for a simple-minded egomaniac. There had to be something else for me to do—something more meaningful, more expressive of my true self. I’m convinced of it! That is my problem, and that is the question I ask of you: What am I to do with myself?

p. 53

> Paradox is the inevitable forerunner of chaos.

p. 49

> “Isn’t there anything you can do about the predator?” Carmody asked.
>
> “Nothing. Nor would I if I could. Predation is a necessary circumstance. Even the Gods are eventually eaten by Fate. You will not be an exception to the universal rule.”

p. 136

> “Now look,” Janice said. “If the king is so rich, why can’t he pay?”
>
> “The king never pays for anything he can get free,” the ferra said. “That’s why he’s so rich.”

p. 93

> “What kind of intelligent beings would evolve on a planet that is all mountains?”
>
> “Stupid ones!” Casker said.

p. 75

> I’ll follow the reedy tenor of his excuses and blast them with the bellowy bass of irrefutable logic!

p. 33

> “You want me to tell you why reality is the way it is,” Seethwright said. “But there is no explanation for that. You must simply learn to fit your preconceptions to what you find. You must not expect reality to adapt itself to you, except very infrequently.

p. 133

> “It is the principle of Business, which is more fundamental than the law of gravity. Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a housebuilding business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called ‘religion,’ and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor. I could talk for a year on the perverse and nasty notions that the religions sell, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But I’ll just mention one matter, which seems to underlie everything the religions preach, and which seems to me almost exquisitely perverse.”
>
> “What’s that?” Carmody asked.
>
> “It’s the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is free. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what do the religions do with this? They say, ‘Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.’ The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the face of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.”
>
> “I think I see what you mean,” Carmody said.
>
> “I’ve made it too complicated,” Maudsley said. “There’s a much simpler reason for avoiding religion.”
>
> “What’s that?”
>
> “Just consider its style—bombastic, hortatory, sickly-sweet, patronizing, artificial, inapropos, boring, filled with dreary images or peppy slogans—fit subject matter for senile old women and unweaned babies, but for no one else. I cannot believe that the God I met here would ever enter a church; he had too much taste and ferocity, too much anger and pride. I can’t believe it, and for me that ends the matter. Why should I go to a place that a God would not enter?”

p. 88

> How nicely you put it! We may rant against fortune and the world, but we are left at the end with the stark proposition: “These are the things which are.”

p. 108

> Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is popular art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.”

p. 187