William Tenn

Quotes

1. The pull of fashion has always been that of the stampeding herd.

   p. 224

2. 

   It had taken a couple of billion years to produce me. In that couple of billion years, I had millions upon millions of ancestors. Slime-like ancestors, jelly-like ancestors, water-breathing ancestors, air-breathing ancestors, ancestors that floated, that swam, that crawled, that ran, that climbed, that finally walked. And all of those ancestors, no matter how different, had one thing in common.

   They had survived long enough to have descendants. Other species didn’t and their lines were extinct, bare bones in rock strata. But no matter how scarce food got, no matter what enemies they faced, what unprecedented natural upheavals they had to adjust to, my ancestors somehow managed to pull through, and have offspring. That’s how I happen to be here.

   p. 51

3. 

   “Creatures trained in warfare are what he calls ‘philosophically anti-life.’”

   p. 110

4. 

   The delegate returned to tell his countrymen that the Americans, always notorious for their madness, had finally specialized in cretinism.

   p. 66

5. 

   Scrabbling like mad at their beloved fence, the politicians tried to avoid taking a definite position on either side.

   p. 234

6. 

   “Size, power, numbers—since the beginning of time, those three have been trying to correlate with right and wrong. So far, they haven’t succeeded.”

   Nodding, the Ambassador murmured, “Very true. But, on the other hand, they do exceedingly well with life and death.”

   p. 142

7. 

   “And, as a result of this examination,” the forked pink beard smiled down gently from above, “the specialists discovered that what you call the human race was nonviable. That is, while the individuals composing it had strongly developed instincts of self-preservation, the species as a whole was suicidal.”

   “Suicidal!” I found myself breathing up with rest.

   “Quite. This is a matter on which there can be little argument from the more honest among you. High civilization is a product of communal living and Man, in groups, has always tended to wipe himself out. In fact, a large factor in the development of what little civilization you do experience has been the rewards contingent upon the development of mass-destruction weapons.”

   p. 144

8. 

   Don’t be bitter, young sir. If you want to go on living you have to be alert. And you can’t be alert and bitter at the same time.

   p. 89

9. 

   Laws produce lawbreakers, Bernie, like hens produce eggs. Civilization has nothing to do with it.

   p. 233

10. 

    That’s the big gimmick in this business—dressing it up so they can’t tell it’s the same thing they’ve been seeing since they got their first universal vaccination. If you dress it up enough, the sticks will always go nuts over it. Maybe the critics will make cracks, sure, but who reads the critics?

    p. 188

11. 

    The sad truth about political saints of any given past is that nobody but a scholar will take the trouble to read their complete works and try to see them whole.

    p. 147

12. 

    The real world. As good a name for it as any other. Carter was a mystic never and a Freudian only when the occasion suited him. His credo was simple: anything that is, is real.

    p. 62