Quotes by Olaf Stapledon

“No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.”

“In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit. People were constantly getting together, but they never really got thereFor everyone searched his neighbors eyes for the image of hi...”

“In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit. People were constantly getting together, but they never really got there. Everyone was terrified of being alone with himself; yet in...”

“All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When...”

“In the tide of these wild thoughts we checked our fancy, remembering that only on the rare grains called planets can life gain foothold, and that all this wealth of restless jewels was but a waste ...”

“Conceive a world-society developed materially far beyond the wildest dreams of America. Unlimited power, derived partly from the artificial disintegration of atoms, partly from the actual annihilat...”

“We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid of cumbersome machinery.”

“They grew up, moulded by the harsh or kindly pressure of their fellows, to be either well nurtured, generous, sound, or mentally crippled, bitter, unwittingly vindictive.”

“Even if the powers destroy us," he said, "who are we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own high ends, use our strength a...”

“But in spite of this material prosperity he was a slave. His work and his leisure consisted of feverish activity, punctuated by moments of listless idleness which he regarded as both sinful and unp...”

“That strange blend of the commercial traveller the missionary and the barbarian conqueror which was the American abroad.”

“So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors ons ago.”

“That strange blend of the commercial traveller the missionary and the barbarian conqueror which was the American abroad.”