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011bc65 It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button. sociology technology John Brunner
bcd5471 There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better." wisdom foolish John Brunner
9ec1152 I'm myself, not a label. individuality wit John Brunner
057c432 Don't bother explaining--I've heard all the excuses and the trouble is most of them are true. excuses explain excuse John Brunner
d8bd405 What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree. wisdom popularity John Brunner
e45b615 to travel faster than a speeding bullet is not much help if you and it are heading straight towards each other irony John Brunner
a81de9b We are told that "the meek shall inherit the earth." It follows that the meek are chosen of God. I shall try to be meek, not because I want the earth - you can keep it, after the way you've fucked it around it's not worth having - but because I too should like to be chosen of God. QED. Besides, I like animals better than you bastards." pollution John Brunner
545d7f3 She recalled him as a forceful and witty speaker with a ready repartee and a penetrating voice. He had once, for example, put down a spokesman for the pesticide industry with a remark that people still quoted at parties: "And I presume on the eighth day God called you and said, 'I changed my mind about insects!" pesticides pollution John Brunner
e35ca3c Man has one name, and many more than two natures. But the essential two are these: that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos... A third element of man's nature is this: that he shall not understand what he is doing. understanding pattern order human-nature John Brunner
a345aec It's common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it was on your side and not theirs. wit John Brunner
9f1693d You don't bother to memorise the literature--you learn to read and keep a shelf of books. John Brunner
e17f2f9 If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing. human-rights humanity John Brunner
3e84682 True, you're not a slave. You're worse off than that by a long, long way. You're a predatory beast shut up in a cage of which the bars aren't fixed, solid objects you can gnaw at or in despair batter against with your head until you get punch-drunk and stop worrying. No, those bars are the competing members of your own species, at least as cunning as you on average, forever shifting around so you can't pin them down, liable to get in your w.. John Brunner
9fcd60c Damn right I voted for him. But if I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have cast a vote--I'd have cast a brick. voting John Brunner
cebf6db Next, the stalled cars had their windows opaqued with a cheap commercial compound used for etching glass, and slogans were painted on their doors. Some were long: THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU'RE KILLING ME! John Brunner
c959809 The killers are the people who are ruining the world to line their pockets, poisoning us, burying us under garbage! garbage profits John Brunner
68fb8ba as though, capable themselves of suffering, they granted no reality to the suffering of others. 'The subject exhibited a pain response.' But not, under any circumstances, . pain suffering scientists John Brunner
fc9f459 After all, the rich get richer and the poor get children. Which is okay so long as lots of them starve in infancy. social-injustice John Brunner
ae7d617 We know a lot nowadays about how to extrapolate from rats to people, but we don't only have to rely on that. In a sense we've made ourselves into experimental animals. There are too many of us, too crowded, in an environment we've poisoned with our own-uh-byproducts. Now when this happens to a wild species, or to rats in a lab, the next generation turns out weaker and slower and more timid. This is a defense mechanism. nature experimentation John Brunner
3e840ec Terrible diarrhea, Doctor, and I feel so weak!" "Take these pills and come back in three days if you're not better." "Terrible diarrhea..." "Take these pills..." "Terrible..." "Take..." "Doctor, I know it's Sunday, but the kid's in such a terrible state - you've got to help me!" "Give him some junior aspirin and bring him to my office tomorrow. Goodbye." EVERYWHERE, USA: a sudden upswing in orders for very small coffins, the right size t.. disease John Brunner
50366ad You will die, and I, and all we can create--why not a city? But if there is one thing that deserves to be immortal, it is knowledge. mortality optimism barratong knowledge John Brunner
d82f9fd Toffler's Law, I guess: the future arrives too soon and in the wrong order. John Brunner
2dca460 intelligence and wisdom aren't the same. John Brunner
38b9f6e It's natural for a man to defend what's dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles-in short to defend not himself but people whom he's never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him-you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. .. war human-nature John Brunner
45e3ca1 It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with. So SHUT UP, do you hear me? SHUT UP! John Brunner
338905f The walls were chipped and needed paint. The windows were mostly okay but one pane was blocked with cardboard. There were fleas the exterminator couldn't kill and rats that scrabbled in the walls and mice who left droppings like a cocked snook and roaches that thrived on insecticide, even the illegal kinds. poverty pests John Brunner
5815605 Page: Don't keep the world on tenterhooks, Tom! Out with it! What's the best thing we can do to ensure a long, happy, healthy future for mankind? environmental-values John Brunner
185a135 Take stock, citizen bacillus, Now that there are so many billions of you, Bleeding through your opened veins, Into your bathtub, or into the Pacific Of that by which they may remember you. John Brunner
de7af5e It's the beginning of wisdom when you admit you've gone astray. John Brunner
66e7dd1 Shit, I forgot. This time of the afternoon the bar's probably shut. Half the staff has gone sick again. Mono, I think. Well, let's go look anyway; we might be lucky. We can't go up to my room--it's full of bugs.' Which kind?' Both. John Brunner
f9e314e Putain mais quelle fichue imagination je peux avoir ... John Brunner
92eb029 You know Chad's definition of the New Poor? People who are too far behind with time-payments on next year's model to make the down-payment on the one for the year after? John Brunner
02f9203 Right! Right! 'Stead of which, over here, they shit in the water until it's dangerous to drink, then make a fucking fortune out of selling us gadgets to purify it again. Why can't they be made to strain out their own shit? John Brunner
2d67767 What hurt him most of all, made him feel like a sick child aware of terrible wrongness and yet incapable of explaining it to anyone who might help, was that in spite of the evidence around them, in spite of what their eyes and ears reported-and sometimes their flesh, from bruises, stab wounds, racking coughs, weeping sores-these people believed their way of life was the best in the world, and were prepared to export it at the point of a gun.. nationalism health John Brunner
cb55778 We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that's better. John Brunner
1e79433 There are two kinds of fool. One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.' And one says, 'This is new, and therefore better. John Brunner
b54d87f In an age when we have more choice than ever before, more mobility, more information, more opportunity to fulfill ourselves, how is it that people can prefer to be identical? John Brunner
b57761b It's the social counterpart of natural selection. Those groups within society that craved power at the expense of everything else--morality, self-respect, honest friendship--they achieved dominance long ago. The mass of the public no longer has any contact with government; all they know is that if they step out of line they'll be trodden on. John Brunner
8e297f2 We know, we feel in our guts, that decisions are constantly being made which are going to wreck our ambitions, our dreams, our personal relationships. But the people making those decisions are keeping them secret, because if they don't they'll lose the leverage they have over their subordinates. John Brunner
b65b079 It was also not difficult to forecast that no matter how well endowed they were with material resources those countries where the Industrial Revolution arrived late would change proportionately more slowly. After all, the rich get richer and the poor get children. John Brunner
64bbc4c Few of us are equipped to cope with the complexity and dazzling variety of twenty-first-century existence. John Brunner
57fcbfb The explosion of human knowledge has accelerated to the point where even the most brilliant can't cope with it any more. Theories have rigidified into dogma just as they did in the Middle Ages. The leading experts feel obligated to protect their creed against the heretics. John Brunner
066803e Stand on Zanzibar is an information overload on topics that sensible people would never want to learn about. John Brunner
b90c728 Best if the driver didn't have to get hurt. Though having been fool enough to volunteer for army service, of course, and worse still, having been fool enough to accept orders unquestioningly from a machine... But everybody did that. Everybody, all the time. Otherwise none of this would have been possible. Similarly, none of it would have had to happen. John Brunner
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