11 quotes found
“A journey is a dismal thing when there can be no homecoming.”
“What was civilization ever, really, but the attempt by man to talk himself into being good?”
“Simulant - something that doesn't exist but pretends to....Dissimulant - an object that exists but pretends not to.”
“Chapulier's Rule (the law of least resistance). If the machine is not too bright and incapable of reflection, it does whatever you tell it to do. But a smart machine will first consider which is mo...”
“A man can control only what he comprehends, and comprehend only what he is able to put into words. The inexpressible therefore is unknowable. By examining future stages in the evolution of language...”
“The opportunity for evil in itself does not suffice; people need a rationale as well. Consider how unpleasant, how awkward it must be when your neighbor, catching his breath (and that can happen an...”
“We owe our liberation to chemistry," he went on. "For all perception is but a change in the concentration of hydrogen ions on the surface of the brain cells. Seeing me, you actually experience a di...”
“All the wild beasts have been extinct for years, but it's perfectly possible to synthesize them autobiogenically. On the other hand, why be bound to what was once produced by natural evolution? The...”
“Progress is a wonderful thing of course, and I can appreciate the lactiferins that are sprinkled on the pasture to turn the grass to cheese. And yet this lack of cows, however rational it may be, g...”
“He also said - pointedly - that space travel nowadays was an escape from the problems of Earth. That is, one took off for the stars in the hope that the worst would happen and be done with in one's...”
“Come now, Tichy. For half a century civilization hasn't been left to its own devices. A hundred years ago a certain Dior was dictating fashions in clothing. Today this sort of regulating has embrac...”
