Quotessence
Home / Authors / Gordon R. Dickson Biography
Gordon R. Dickson

Gordon R. Dickson Biography

Fiction writer

Related Quotes

“They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams—and still calls for more. They are fools who think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No Parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for the doing of these things was itself the doing of them. To wield oneself—to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand—and so to make or break that which no one else can build or nun—that is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt the sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy—to these both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods.”

Agency
Book:Soldier, Ask Not
Create image

“Now our world is at the present time firmly in the grip of a mechanical monster, whose head - if you want to call it that - is the World Engineer's Complex. That monster is opposed to us and can keep all too good a tab on us through every purchase we make with our credit numbers, every time we use the public transportation or eat a meal or rent a place to live.”

IfsWorldWantUseNumbersComplexesCreditMonstersMealsOur WorldEngineersTransportationPlaces To LivePresent TimePublic Transportation
Book:No Room for Man
Create image