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John Brunner

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Famous John Brunner Quotes

“It's natural for a man to defend what's dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles-in short to defend not himself but people whom he's never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him-you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. Result: the society has to defend itself from its defenders, because what's admirable in wartime is termed psychopathic in peace. It's easier to wreck a man than to repair him. Ask any psychotherapist. And take a look at the crime figures among veterans.”

WarHuman NatureCrime
Book:Stand on Zanzibar
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“It started with population. Not having a fixed breeding season was among the reasons why mankind achieved dominance; it kept our numbers topped up at an explosive rate. Past certain stage restrictive process set in: male libido is reduced or diverted into nonfertile channels, female ovulation is irregularized and sometimes fails completely. But long before we reach that point we find the company of our fellow creatures so unbearable we resort to war, or a tribal match. Kill one another or ourselves. ​”

WarPopulation Control
Book:The Shockwave Rider
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“I'm proud of it. Apart from marking the first occasion when I used my talent on behalf of other people without being asked and without caring whether I was rewarded--which was a major breakthrough in itself--the job was a pure masterpiece. Working on it, I realized in my guts how an artist or an author can get high on the creative act. The poker who wrote Precipice's original tapeworm was pretty good, but you could theoretically have killed it without shutting down the net--that is, at the cost of losing thirty or forty billion bits of data. Which I gather they were just about prepared to do when I showed up. But mine...Ho, no! That, I cross my heart, cannot be killed without DISMANTLING the net.”

Computer ProgrammingComputersHackingHackersHacktivismHacker FolkloreFirst Hacktivist
Book:The Shockwave Rider
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“Notice the granite slab you’re passing under with the lettering engraved by GT’s high-precision explosive forming process. They said nobody could work natural stone explosively so we went ahead and did it, thus bearing out the company motto at the head of the list.” A dropout near Stal moved lips in an audible whisper as he struggled to interpret the obliquely viewed writing. “Underneath are listed prime examples of human shortsightedness, like you’ll see it’s impossible for men to breathe at over thirty miles an hour, and a bumblebee cannot possibly fly, and interplanetary spaces are God’s quarantine regulations. Try telling the folk at Moonbase Zero about that!” A few sycophantic laughs. Several places ahead of Stal the Divine Daughter crossed herself at the Name. “Why is it so sheeting cold in here?” yelled someone up the front near the guide. “If you were wearing GT’s new Polyclime fabrics, like me, you wouldn’t feel it,” the guide responded promptly. Drecky plantees, yet. How much of this crowd are GT staff members hired by government order and kept hanging about on makeweight jobs for want of anything better to do? “But that cues me in to another prime instance of how wrong can you be? Seventy or eighty years back they were saying to build a computer to match a human brain would take a skyscraper to house it and Niagara Falls to cool it. Well, that’s not up on the slab there because they were only half wrong about the cooling bit—in fact Niagara Falls wouldn’t do, it’s not cold enough. We use liquid helium by the ton load. But they were sheeting wrong about the skyscraper. Spread around this balcony and I’ll show you why.” Passive, the hundred and nine filed around a horseshoe gallery overlooking the chill sliced-egg volume of the vault. Below on the main floor identical-looking men and women came and went, occasionally glancing upwards with an air of incuriosity. Resentful, another score or so of the hundred and nine decided they weren’t going to be interested no matter what.”

SychophantsPlantees
Book:Stand on Zanzibar
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“As its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.”

WayMindDifferentTodayLiteratureTomorrowExcellenceMediumsCertaintyMiserableEvolveExcitementAweAnticipationCantOpen MindCredulityScepticism
Author:John Brunner
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“There's one bright spot in the generally gloomy picture know as the Pacific Conflict Zone. According to my calculations, by the year 2500 or so we should have killed off every last member of our species who is stupid enough to take part in so futile a pastime as this war between "ideals," and with luck they won't have left their genes behind because they'll typically have been killed at an age when society thinks they're too young to assume the responsibility of childbearing. After that we may get some peace and quiet for a change.”

ThinkingKnowsShouldYearsMayHas BeensWarEnoughAgeLastsYoungLeftBehindsResponsibilityStupidQuietConflictMembersIdealsShould HaveLuckAssumingSpeciesSpotsZoneGenesCalculationsPacificGloomyPastimePeace And QuietChildbearing
Author:John Brunner
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“I just haven't been conditioned into thinking that the right answer can't be a simple one. When I told you you'd been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong?”

ThinkingOpportunitySimpleAnswersCommonAttitudeLibertyHavensColdSpreadFree WillRight AnswersUnderminingImpliedCommon Cold
Book:Stand on Zanzibar
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“NEGRO :; Member of a subgroup of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamed not by its residents Africa. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis.”

HumansRaceChristianityLandMilitaryMembersWeaponsNuclearSuperiorsHuman RaceGasConcentrationNervesCampsAncestorNuclear WeaponsAutomobileEpidemicsHailChunksResidentsConcentration CampCaucasian
Book:Stand on Zanzibar
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“I believe in logic, the sequence of cause and effect, and in science its only begotten son our law, which was conceived by the ancient Greeks, thrived under Isaac Newton, suffered under Albert Einstein... That fragment of a 'creed for materialism' which a friend in college had once shown him rose through Donald's confused mind.”

MindBelieveLawScienceI BelieveCausesEffectsCollegeSonLogicAccountsRoseAncientI Believe InGreekConfusedMaterialismCreedsFragmentsSequenceNewtonCause And EffectAncient GreekIsaacConfused Mind
Author:John Brunner
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“Extremism. It is an almost infallible sign — a kind of death-rattle — when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them.”

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Book:Stand on Zanzibar
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