John Brunner quotes - page 7

I can at least comfort myself with the idea that whatever I've done I've helped to nail a lie, and I'm coming to think that lying is among the worst of all human failings. Next to actual killing. And experience has made us almost equally good at both of them.” "I have killed many people and seen many more killed on my orders,” Jogajong said. "It is what must be paid to buy what we want.” "What we've been told we want, by liars more skilled than ourselves. (John Brunner)
That, chiefly, was why Flamen put up with him. He had never dared tarnish his own image of himself by learning the whore's-trading skills required to keep afloat in the cut-throat ocean of modern business, yet he correspondingly did not dare to forgo them altogether. Prior was a perfect compromise: the epitome of self-deluded honor, who could dismiss the most flagrant kind of cheating from his conscience on the grounds that he had thought of it and he could not possibly be a dishonest man. View quote
John Brunner
Mother Superior couldn't be drearier! Life is oppressive and lonely and dun! Little Miss Celia envied Ophelia-Hamlet ignored her and then there was none! Rat-ta-ta-ta, rat-ta-ta-ta, rat-ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta. Penny a look, goobledegook, you can't live the life that you read in a book. Pouncing and bouncing hear what I'm announcing-it's true and you'll never hide from it. You may think you're knowing in coming and going but you can't take the ‘come' out of ‘comet.' As I was going down the drains I met a man with seven brains. Every brain had seven lives, every life had seven wives, every wife told seven lies, who will win the liars' prize? View quote
John Brunner
We cannot allow quibbles to stand in the way of the truth. View quote
John Brunner
. . . include prima facie but not. View quote
John Brunner
But what brought about this ‘decline of civilization'?” Conroy demanded. "It can't just have been the introduction of these weapons you've been talking about, this System C equipment.” "The maximization of arms sales implied the maximization of inter-human hostility,” Madison/Gottschalk said. "All the existing sources of this phenomenon were tapped, and those proving particularly fruitful were patriotism, parochialism, xenophobia, ochlophobia, racial, religious and linguistic differences, and the so-called ‘gulf between the generations.' It was found readily feasible to emphasize these pre-existent attitudes to the point where a System C integrated weaponry unit was so desirable among the informed populace that the possibility of another individual acquiring this virtually indestructible equipment sufficed to provoke an attack on him before he purchased one. View quote
John Brunner