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064f0f3
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Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.
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universe
stars
death
science
gravestone
science-fiction
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Clifford D. Simak |
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381bc7c
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Once there had been joy, but now there was only sadness, and it was not, he knew, alone the sadness of an empty house; it was the sadness of all else, the sadness of the Earth, the sadness of the failures and the empty triumphs.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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00b91a8
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I can't go back," said Towser. "Nor I," said Fowler. "They would turn me back into a dog," said Towser. "And me," said Fowler, "back into a man."
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dogs
science-fiction
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Clifford D. Simak |
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e344b71
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Man's inability to understand and appreciate the thought and viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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1eba1c3
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The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship - a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family. Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed..
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Clifford D. Simak |
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51e0869
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Jenkins tried to say goodbye, but he could not say goodbye. If he could only weep, he thought, but robots could not weep.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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b5ba18f
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You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball--why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all had done was the sweating and the bleeding.
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corporate-greed
government-financing
grants
value-of-work
rights
finance
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Clifford D. Simak |
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5415d1f
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That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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b6f9e0f
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These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story's done they ask many questions: "What is Man?" they'll ask. Or perhaps: "What is a city?" Or: "What is a war?"
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Clifford D. Simak |
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865f740
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It's like coming home," said Webster and he wasn't talking to the dog. "It's like you've been away for a long, long time and then you come home again. And it's so long you don't recognize the place. Don't know the furniture, don't recognize the floor plan. But you know by the feel of it that it's an old familiar place and you are glad you came." "I like it here," said. Ebenezer and he meant Webster's lap, but the man misunderstood. "Of cour..
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dogs
home
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Clifford D. Simak |
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edaacb8
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Jenkins tried to say goodbye, but he could not say goodbye. If he could only weep, he thought, but a robot could not weep.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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7208df7
|
For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person.
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dehumanization
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Clifford D. Simak |
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1fd6421
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We thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't, when we never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with it.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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8e921b1
|
Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it. He
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Clifford D. Simak |
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b563225
|
Race preservation is a myth ... a myth that you all have lived by--a sordid thing that has arisen out of your social structure. The race ends every day. When a man dies the race ends for him--so far as he's concerned there is no longer any race.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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1e26fe2
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Well," said Winslowe, moving over to plant himself behind the wheel, "it don't matter much what any of us are, just so we get along with one another. If some of the nations would only take a lesson from some small neighborhood like ours--a lesson in how to get along--the world would be a whole lot better."
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Clifford D. Simak |
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fe292ce
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It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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ed646ee
|
Let's get going," Towser urged. "Where do you want to go?" "Anywhere," said Towser. "Just start going and see where we end up. I have a feeling... well, a feeling-" "Yes, I know," said Fowler. For he had the feeling, too. The feeling of high destiny. A certain sense of greatness. A knowledge that somewhere off beyond the horizons lay adventure and things greater than adventure." --
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Clifford D. Simak |
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3360c45
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But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices--the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered--the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all crea..
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Clifford D. Simak |
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b32d011
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He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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5fc5fc4
|
you humans are a lonely lot of folks. You never have known your fellow-man. You can't know him because you haven't the common touch of understanding that makes it possible to know him. You have friendships, sure, but those friendships are based on pure emotions, never on real understanding. You get along together, sure. But you get along by tolerance rather than by understanding. You work out your problems by agreement, but that agreement i..
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Clifford D. Simak |
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1393e26
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Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional.
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doubt
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Clifford D. Simak |
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30cbf8c
|
There are certain segments of society that will never lend an ear to a new idea. They squat in a certain place and will not budge from it. They will find many reasons to maintain a way of life that is comfortable to them. They'll cling to old religions; they'll fasten with the grip of death on ethics that were dead, without their knowing it, centuries before; they will embrace a logic that can be blown over with a breath, still claiming it ..
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Clifford D. Simak |
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2f11480
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With creation went responsibility and he was not equipped to assume more than the moral responsibility for the wrong that he had done, and moral responsibility, unless it might be coupled with the ability to bring about some mitigation, was an entirely useless thing.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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116f156
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There was almost a fairy quality to this place, he thought. The far look and the clear air and the feeling of detachment that touched almost on greatness of the spirit. As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it.
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pastoralism
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Clifford D. Simak |
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0192cd1
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One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world's tomorrow, another world's today. And yesterday is tomorrow and tomorrow is the past. Except, there wasn't any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one's mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. ..
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Clifford D. Simak |
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af3a51b
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He stood and watched his friend hobble around the house, felt the cold claw of loneliness reach out and touch him with icy fingers. A terrible loneliness. The loneliness of age--of age and the outdated.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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197dd51
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But the bars that held you, the bars that kept you in were the luxury and soft living. It is hard to walk out on a thing like that
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ease
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Clifford D. Simak |
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714b992
|
That was how it started, Enoch thought, almost a hundred years ago. The campfire fantasy had turned into fact and the Earth now was on galactic charts, a way station for many different peoples traveling star to star. Strangers once, but now there were no strangers. There were no such things as strangers. In whatever form, with whatever purpose, all of them were people.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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5d947ca
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The walls cried out to him. And voices cried out as well from the shadow of the past. He stood and listened to them, and now a strange thing struck him. The voices were there, but he did not hear the words.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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32a7daf
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The pendulum had swung too far, as always, and now was swinging back, and the horror of intolerance had been loosed upon the land.
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pendulum
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Clifford D. Simak |
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2aae50f
|
In this room, he told himself, history might have been written, the course of cosmic empire might have been shaped and the fate of stars decided. But now there was no sign of life, just a brooding silence that seemed to whisper in a tongueless language of days and faces and problems long since wiped out by the march of years.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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fa99649
|
As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it. He
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Clifford D. Simak |
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4ccb9b9
|
Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven't got mob psychology anymore. You can't have mob psychology when people don't give a damn what happens to a thing that's dead already--a political system that broke down under its own weight.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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448cff1
|
We have fallen on hard times of the spirit, with many of the people more concerned with fear of evil than contemplation of the good.
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positive-thinking
negative-thinking
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Clifford D. Simak |
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f1c5fc3
|
The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship--a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family. Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed f..
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|
Clifford D. Simak |
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5b189bf
|
Well," said Winslowe, moving over to plant himself behind the wheel, "it don't matter much what any of us are, just so we get along with one another. If some of the nations would only take a lesson from some small neighborhood like ours--a lesson in how to get along--the world would be a whole lot better." Enoch"
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|
|
Clifford D. Simak |
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6324892
|
Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology.
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Clifford D. Simak |
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22af03e
|
Unconventional," said Jenkins. "What is conventional?" asked Andrew. "Living in a dream? Living for a memory? you must be weary of it." "Not"
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Clifford D. Simak |
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45f113a
|
Had the memory worn thin? Had the debt he owed been paid? Had he discharged the last ounce of devotion? "There are worlds out there," Andrew was saying, "and life on some of them. Even some intelligence. There is work to do." He"
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Clifford D. Simak |
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f2b6fb6
|
A yellow leaf fluttered down from overhead and settled in his lap, a clear, almost transparent yellow against the brownness of the robe. He moved to brush it off and then he let it stay. For who am I, he thought, to interfere with or dispute even such a simple thing as the falling of a leaf. He
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Clifford D. Simak |
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8c61377
|
The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship - a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family. Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed..
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Clifford D. Simak |
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8b20136
|
Look, Nathaniel. Men may not always be the way they are today. They may change. And, if they do, you have to carry on; you have to take the dream and keep it going. You'll have to pretend that you are men." "Us dogs," Nathaniel pledged, "will do it." "It won't come for thousands and thousands of years," said Grant. "You will have time to get ready. But you must know. You must pass the word along. You must not forget." "I know," said Nathani..
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Clifford D. Simak |
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d600ec0
|
We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques - that working together, by putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant than any race, alone, could hope of accomplishing.
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war
|
Clifford D. Simak |