John Brunner Quotes

• We've been slaves to our tools since the first caveman made the first knife to help him get his supper. After that there was no going back, and we built till our machines were ten million times more powerful than ourselves.
  We gave ourselves cars when we might have learned to run; we made airplanes when we might have grown wings; and then the inevitable. We made a machine our God.

  John Brunner

  Running, Powerful, Airplane

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• To go faster you must slow down.

  John Brunner

  Teaching, Learning, Slow Down

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• If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

  John Brunner

  Evil, Phenomenon, Humans

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.196, Open Road Media

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• There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better.

  John Brunner

  Change, Two, Politics

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.62, Open Road Media

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• It's supposed to be automatic but actually you have to press this button.

  John Brunner

  Technology, Zanzibar, Buttons

  "Stand on Zanzibar". Book by John Brunner, 1968.

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• What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.

  John Brunner

  People, Want, Way

  John Brunner (2014). “The Jagged Orbit”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.

  John Brunner

  Machines, Use, Firsts

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.225, Macmillan

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• If the evidence says you're wrong, you don't have the right theory. You change the theory, not the evidence.

  John Brunner

  Theory, Evidence, Ifs

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.495, Macmillan

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• Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I knew people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.

  John Brunner

  Morning, Views, Long

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.135, Macmillan

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• Love and joy are incredibly habit-forming; often a single exposure is enough to cause permanent addiction.

  John Brunner

  Addiction, Joy, Causes

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.160, Macmillan

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• People who hate in concrete terms are dangerous. People who manage to hate only in abstracts are the ones worth having for your friends.

  John Brunner

  Hate, People, Dangerous

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.207, Macmillan

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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.

  John Brunner

  Stress, Kind, Share

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.169, Macmillan

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• Let's all be different same as me.

  John Brunner

  Different, Conformity

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.87, Open Road Media

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• After all, the rich get richer and the poor get children. Which is okay so long as lots of them starve in infancy.

  John Brunner

  Children, Long, Rich

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.107, Open Road Media

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• How do you whip up resentment against absentee landlords and pocketers of bribes when the highest ambition of the people is either to become the former or be in a position to receive the latter?

  John Brunner

  Ambition, People, Resentment

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.107, Macmillan

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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?

  John Brunner

  Attitude, Opportunity, Simple

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.491, Macmillan

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• For all the claims one hears about the liberating impact of the data-net, the truth is that it's wished on most of us a brand-new reason for paranoia.

  John Brunner

  Impact, Data, Truth Is

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.141, Open Road Media

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• You have many years to live do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.

  John Brunner

  Years, Proud, Remember

  John Brunner (2013). “Stand On Zanzibar”, p.272, Hachette UK

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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.

  John Brunner

  Military, Epidemics, Race

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.73, Macmillan

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• Any society which gives lip-service to the idea of equal opportunity is going to generate jealousy of others who are better off than you are, even if the thing that's in short supply can't be carved up and shared without destroying it.

  John Brunner

  Opportunity, Ideas, Giving

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.216, Macmillan

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• Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.

  John Brunner

  Want, Environment, Automobile

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.13, Macmillan

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• It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.

  John Brunner

  Mind, Want, Facts

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.37, Open Road Media

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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.

  John Brunner

  Confused, Believe, Son

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• We fret about how to keep going the same old way when we should be casting around for another way that’s better.

  John Brunner

  Way, Casting, Should

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.213, Open Road Media

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• I'm myself, not a label.

  John Brunner

  Labels

  John Brunner (2014). “The Shockwave Rider”, p.196, Open Road Media

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