"Hope could be dangerous, desire could be catastrophic."

Robert Sheckley Literature See all quotes by Robert Sheckley →

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“I’ll follow the reedy tenor of his excuses and blast them with the bellowy bass of irrefutable logic!”

“It was one hell of an inspection when you went around finding how many sane men you had left.”

“Even rulers, notoriously the slowest of men to change, realized that something had to be done.”

“Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull’s lordly selection of death has seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter.”

“In a way it made no difference, since nothing is permanent except our illusions.”

“After many centuries we have rediscovered nature’s way of keeping populations in hand. Nature does it the old-fashioned way, by killing people.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Nothing is so hateful to the philistine as the "dreams of his youth." ... For what appeared to him in his dreams was the voice of the spirit, calling him once, as it does everyone. It is of this that …"

— Walter Benjamin

Literature1892–1940

#hope

"In its glorification of the spirit of order, the Church seemed to be giving its sanction to the type of bourgeois who was concerned to fulfill his duties scrupulously and content to remain within his …"

— Bernard Groethuysen

Philosophy1880–1946

#religion

"If you can manipulate news, a judge can manipulate the law. A smart lawyer can keep a killer out of jail, a smart accountant can keep a thief from paying taxes, a smart reporter could ruin your reputa…"

— Mario Cuomo

Politics1932–2015

#justice

"I am so daunted by that I never think about it. It is a thing bigger than I am capable of perceiving. Other people are more aware and concerned with it than I could ever allow myself to be."

— Meryl Streep

Entertainment1949

#mind