Group Quotes - page 93
It was deeply fascinating to watch how strikingly contemporary American audiences from coast to coast found Shakespeare's Othello - painfully immediate in its unfolding of evil, innocence, passion, dignity and nobility, and contemporary in its overtones of a clash of cultures, of the partial acceptance of and consequent effect upon one of a minority group. Against this background, the jealousy of the protagonist becomes more credible, the blows to his pride more understandable, the final collapse of his personal, individual world more inevitable. But beyond the personal tragedy, the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievability of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and sacred values - all these suggest the shattering of a universe.
Paul Robeson
A machine, a mechanism, no more than a tool - technological brother to the hoe, the wrench, the hammer - and yet as far a cry from these as the human brain was from that first amino acid which had come into being on this planet when the Earth was very young. One was tempted, Enoch thought, to say that this was as far as a tool could go, that it was the ultimate in the ingenuity possessed by any brain. But that would be a dangerous way of thinking, for perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought - no end to anything.
Clifford D. Simak
All of which goes to show that the State represents all the autocratic, arbitrary, coercive, belligerent forces within a social group, it is a sort of complexus of everything most distasteful to the modern free creative spirit, the feeling for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. War is the health of the State. Only when the State is at war does the modern society function with that unity of sentiment, simple uncritical patriotic devotion, cooperation of services, which have always been the ideal of the State lover. ... How unregenerate the ancient State may be...is indicated by the laws against sedition, and by the Government's unreformed attitude on foreign policy.
Randolph Bourne
... Ursula Le Guin is witty, strong, emphatic and empathic, wise, knowledgeable, easygoing and electric, seraphic, gracious, sanguine and sane. Without sacrificing the finest scintilla of femininity she dominates a group with her not inconsiderable strengths as an individual; it is Ursula Le Guin, as a model, I'm sure, women's liberationists are most striving to emulate. In short, she's dynamite.
Harlan Ellison
My dear Dahl, the first, the primary, task is to bring the earth back into ecological balance. That's your task, you and the Bahamas Corporation. Ours is to give people something exciting to do other than war while that is going on. Without us and our Hunt, you and your high-minded scientists will just be another group of dreamers living in an imaginary kingdom of sweet reason while the madness of real politics rages all around you. Be practical, Dahl, let's do something together.”
"There is something in what you say,” Dahl admitted. "I've been aware for some time of the shortcomings inherent in the sane, dispassionate thinking that we scientists advocate. People don't pay any attention. Unless there's an emergency like Love Canal or Chernobyl, the idea of maintaining and upgrading the earth and its ecosystems is not exactly box-office.
Robert Sheckley