Category: Thought

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head (1961).

I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.

John Updike, testifying before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, Boston, Massachusetts (January 30, 1978).

There are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn’t realize that there are people so stupid you can’t show them anything.

Murray Leinster, The Pirates of Zan (1959).

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992).

Facts are facts! And if they’re impossible, they’re still facts!

Murray Leinster, Time Tunnel (1964), ninth chapter, p. 140.

I know you’re sane and you know you’re sane. But what if we’re both wrong?

Robert Sheckley, “Death of the Dreammaster,” published in Martin H. Greenberg (ed.), The Further Adventures of Batman (1989), p. 24.

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.

Iris Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good,” in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.

It is not very logical to look over the attributes you possess and then declare that they are the most important attributes in the universe.

Robert Sheckley, “In a Land of Clear Colors,” published in Thomas M. Disch, editor, New Constellations: An Anthology of Tomorrow’s Mythologies (1976), p. 87.

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.

Paul Ricœur, “Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning” (1976), p. 79.

There isn’t just one point; it takes time to learn. You don’t have to be intelligent, but I think you have to be open to possibilities and willing to explore. The only stupid people are those who are arrogant and closed off.

Edward de Bono, as interviewed by Angela Balakrishnan in “Edward de Bono: ‘Iraq? They just need to think it through,’” The Guardian (Monday, April 23, 2007).