Brian Aldiss quotes - page 3

Brian Aldiss was a British science fiction writer and anthologist, acclaimed for his imaginative and influential stories. Many of his works explored the future of humanity and the boundaries of technology. He inspired generations of readers and writers through his novels, short stories, and critical essays. Here are 127 of his quotes:

Perhaps the first fire, the first tool, the first wheel, the first carving in a limestone cave, had each possessed a symbolic rather than a practical value, had each been pressed to serve distortion rather than reality. It was a sort of madness that had driven man from his humble sites on the edges of the woods into towns and cities, into arts and wars, into religious crusades, into martyrdom and prostitution, into dyspepsia and fasting, into love and hatred, into this present cul-de-sac; it had all come about in pursuit of symbols. In the beginning was the symbol, and darkness was over the face of the Earth. (Brian Aldiss)

Frank's chromosome was now breeding as true as ever. Blood group, creed, colour of skin - nothing was proof against it. The numbers with shared consciousness, procreating for all they were worth, trebled every generation.

Brian Aldiss

One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backward in time.

Brian Aldiss

It [i. e., his look] held the fatal mixture of stupidity and cunning that lurks at the bottom of all evil.

Brian Aldiss

You know why I am a prisoner-because the laws are so stupid that we prefer to break them than to live by them, although it means life-long imprisonment.

Brian Aldiss

You were fool enough to think that one hundred and fifty million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man's cerebral vortex.

Brian Aldiss

In the extraordinary ancestral compost heap of your unconscious mind, I have burrowed too long.

Brian Aldiss

The thing was not discussable, even with a near acquaintance like Calvin because ... because of the nature of the thing ... because one had to behave like a normal, unworried human being. That at least was sound and clear and gave him comfort: behave like a normal human being.

Brian Aldiss

You see life as a contrast between misery and pleasure, Jon; that is not a correct interpretation.” "It's a pretty good rule of thumb, I should have thought.” "Thought and non-thought is the only valid line of comparison.” "Bit of a bird's-eye view, isn't it? That puts us on the same level as the proles.

Brian Aldiss

They enjoy their show of might,” Adam said. "These people have to express their unhappiness by using ugly things like guns and ill-fitting uniforms, and the whole conception of the camp.

Brian Aldiss

He gets bored with the effort of trying to think, and is unhappy because he knows thinking, or at least "thinking-to-a-purpose” is on the black list of party activities. (Brian Aldiss)

The midwife bustled out to the four in the antechamber and announced that the Almighty (who had recently become a Protestant) had seen fit to bless milady with a son.

Brian Aldiss

What would be the effect of gradually drawing away from the iron laws under which, since its scampering pleistocene infancy, humankind had lived?

Brian Aldiss

As long as the chromosome reproduced itself in sufficient dominance, he was immortal! To him, in an unscientific age, the problem did not present itself quite like that; but he realized that there was a trait to be kept in the family.

Brian Aldiss

Why don't you go somewhere quietly and consult your history books if you have no consciences to consult?

Brian Aldiss

Digging deep in a Martian desert men discovered an enormous brain. It suddenly started to think at them - So they covered it up again...

Brian Aldiss

Men left their strange hobbies on Earth and Venus and projected themselves into the pattern. Their entire personalities were merged with the texture of space itself. Through science, they reached immortality. It was a one-way passage. They did not return. Each Involute carried thousands or even millions of people. There they were, not dead, not living. How they exulted or wept in their transubstantiation, no one left could say. Only this could be said: man had gone, and a great emptiness was fallen over Earth.

Brian Aldiss

I kill from conviction, not to pass a personality quiz.

Brian Aldiss

Sounds to me as if you want journalists,” Timberlane said. "No, sir, we require steady men with integrity. This is not a scoop, it's a way of life.

Brian Aldiss

Did the others here feel the disquiet he felt? Had they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question: Where was "here"? He shut that one down sharply. Deal with one thing at a time. Grope your way gently to the abyss. Categorize your knowledge.

Brian Aldiss

You know that if you had been in charge of creation you would have found some medium less heart-breaking than Time to stage it in. (Brian Aldiss)

Many Franks of the sixteenth generation were killed in the muck of the trenches, he died not once but many times, developing an obsessive dread of war which never left him. By the time the Americans entered the war, he was turning his many thoughts to politics.

Brian Aldiss

There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when it looked as if the intellect might win over the body, and our species become something worthwhile. But too much procreation killed that illusion.

Brian Aldiss

Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he did not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed.... Somewhere that wasn't the house....

Brian Aldiss

As Flitch dryly remarked when Greybeard commented on the graveyard, "Ah, they keep a-planting of 'em, but there ain't any more of 'em growing up.”.

Brian Aldiss

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Brian Aldiss

Brian Aldiss - Image

Photo: Szymon Sokół, CC BY-SA 3.0

Occupation: British Writer
Born: August 18, 1925
Died: August 19, 2017
Quotes count: 127
Wikipedia: Brian Aldiss

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