John Brunner quotes - page 5

John Brunner was a British science fiction author renowned for his innovative and socially critical novels. His works often explored themes such as overpopulation, environmentalism, and the impact of technology on society. He became especially famous for classic novels like "Stand on Zanzibar" and "The Sheep Look Up." Here are 156 of his quotes:

The plane droned on through the black sky, above the clouds masking the Atlantic. It suddenly occurred to Michael that he ought to look at the moon. He hadn't seen it all the time he was in Paris, nor the stars. He slid up the blind of his window and peered out. There was no moon visible. When he consulted his diary he discovered that it had set, a tiny sliver, at exactly the time the plane had taken off from London.

John Brunner

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

When the politicians claim that the public isn't interested any longer in environmental conservation, they're half right. People are actually afraid to be interested, because they suspect-I think rightly-that we'll find if we dig deep enough that we've gone so far beyond the limits of what the planet will tolerate that only a major catastrophe which cuts back both our population and our ability to interfere with the natural biocycle would offer a chance of survival.

John Brunner

COINCIDENCE You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on.

John Brunner

Ah, go to hell!” "That's a remarkably Christian attitude, Donald. Both meaningless and barbaric.

John Brunner

The theory was and always had been: this is the thing the solid citizen has no need to worry about. Important, later all-important question: what about the hollow citizen?

John Brunner

People didn't fly the Atlantic any more if they could help it, except from bravado. Even if your plane wasn't sabotaged or hijacked, it was certain to be behind schedule. Not that there was much to be said for ocean travel either, since the sinking of the Paolo Rizzi last summer and the drowning of thirteen hundred passengers in a sea made foul by a hundred and eighty thousand tons of oil from the tanker she'd collided with. Moral, definitely: stay home.

John Brunner

You and your ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl. You shat in it and boasted about the mess you'd made. And now it's full and overflowing, and you're fat and happy and black kids are going crazy to keep you rich. Goodbye!

John Brunner

Well, like they say, nothing can set a precedent until it happens for the first time.

John Brunner

I don't usually talk much about this, Chester, because my grandfather dinned it into me as a child that it doesn't make any difference who you're descended from unless you can do something yourself to match what your ancestors did to gain their own notoriety.

John Brunner

We've been amazingly lucky, which is another way of saying we've kept our eyes and minds open and responded when something turned up.

John Brunner

I simply can't make myself believe that if they'd been handicapped by belief in capricious supernatural beings they'd have achieved what they did.

John Brunner

There's an old saying: The genius sees what happens, but the plodder sees what he expects to happen.

John Brunner

How can a man be so brilliant and so obtuse?

John Brunner

Damn it, man: anyone who can treat another human being as an object for target practice is stuck even further back in the infantile stage than somebody who's frightened to move on from the masturbation phase and go to bed with a girl!

John Brunner

What's happened to us that we take killings for granted among our children? Don't give me that hogwash about students at college having to be treated as adults-there's nothing adult about playing with guns and grenades!

John Brunner

It was his hope and ambition to cause many deaths. He was an arms salesman by choice, calm and even a little happy to see his products in such demand, capable of trying to clinch a sale at the bedside of a fresh corpse.

John Brunner

The sound of shutters going up around her mind, armored against anything short of a nuke, was very nearly audible in the room.

John Brunner

The sound of a code being broken is usually the same as that of somebody snapping his fingers.

John Brunner

Like all neo-puritans you have a mind like an open drain.

John Brunner

It's okay to be a responsible member of society if only you know what you're going to be held responsible for.

John Brunner

If "media” is the plural of "medium” the question is: how many of them are fraudulent?

John Brunner