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Brian Aldiss

115 quotes

“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The house was a rambling affair. It had few windows, and such as there were did not open, were unbreakable and admitted no light. Darkness lay everywhere; illumination from an invisible source followed one's entry into a room — the black had to be entered before it faded. Every room was furnished, but with odd pieces that bore little relation to each other, as if there was no purpose for the room. Rooms equipped for purposeless beings have that air about them.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They came, by what means he did not know, from outside, the vast abstraction that none of them had ever seen. He had a mental picture of a starry void in which men and monsters swam or battled, and then swiftly erased it. Such ideas did not conform with the quiet behavior of his companions; if they never spoke about outside, did they think about it?”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should — not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are." His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment — or we're all monsters!”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That house, whatever it was, was the embodiment of all the coldness in his mind. Harley said to himself: "Whatever has been done to me, I've been cheated. Someone has robbed me of something so thoroughly I don't even know what it is. It's been a cheat, a cheat.…”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was extraordinary to be in two places at once, doing two different things — extraordinary, but not confusing. He merely had two bodies which were as integrated as his two hands had been.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Frank II liked Spain. Philip's capital was gayer, warmer, and more sanitary than London. It was intoxicating to enjoy the best of both courts. It proved also extremely remunerative: the shared consciousness of Frank I and II was by far the quickest communicational link between the two rival countries, and as such was worth money. Not that Frank revealed his secret to a soul, but he let it be known he had a fleet of capable spies who moved without risk of detection between England and Spain. Burly Lord Burleigh beamed upon him. So did the Duke of Medina Sidonia.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Frank II had been back in the aptly named Mother Country for only a few months when a lady of his acquaintance presented him with Frank IV. Frank IV was a girl, christened Berenice. The state of coma which had ensnared Frank II for so long did not afflict Berenice, or any other of his descendants. Another tremendous adjustment in the shared consciousness had to be made. That also had its compensations; Frank was the first man ever really to appreciate the woman's point of view.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness — but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ambition of the original Frank had not died; it had grown subtler. It had become a wish to sample everything. The more bodily habitations there were with which to sample, the more tantalizing the idea seemed: for many experiences, belonging only to one brief era, are never repeated, and may be gone before they are perceived and tasted.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many modifications in private and public life took place. Privacy ceasing to exist, all new houses were glass-built, curtains abolished, walls pulled down. Police went, the entire legal structure vanished overnight — a man does not litigate against himself. A parody of Parliament remained, to deal with foreign affairs, but party politics, elections, leaders in newspapers (even newspapers themselves) were scrapped.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Frank's chromosome conquered everywhere. Peace was guaranteed. By the end of another century's ruthless intermarriage, Russia and Asia were engulfed as thoroughly as Europe, and by the same loving methods. Billions of people: one consciousness.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It [i.e., his look] held the fatal mixture of stupidity and cunning that lurks at the bottom of all evil.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the extraordinary ancestral compost heap of your unconscious mind, I have burrowed too long.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backward in time.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn’t; it’s something that goes on inside us.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let’s have a toast—to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or assholes they have!”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s one thing about these religious boys—they reckon that if they are on God’s side, then the enemy must be on the devil’s, and so they have no qualms about giving it to ’em hot and strong.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to overconsume.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve no objection to morality, except that it’s obsolete.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All over the world there must be far-reaching changes in animal behavior and habitat; if only one could have another life in which to chart it all....Ah, well, that’s not a fruitful thing to wish, is it?”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are you a religious man, Joe?” Flitch pulled a face. “I leaves that sort of thing to women.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The shuffle only demonstrated people’s fatuous belief in a political cure for a human condition.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All of which pointed to a moral that they should have learned long before, Arthur thought: Never trust a bunch of lousy politicians to do your thinking for you.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn’t be where we are now.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Mrs. Swinton's garden, it was always summer. The lovely almond trees stood about it in perpetual leaf. Monica Swinton plucked a saffron-colored rose and showed it to David.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had tried to love him.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore the plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There have been mechanicals on the market with mini-computers for brains — plastic things without life, super-toys — but we have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Teddy, you know what I was thinking? How do you tell what are real things from what aren't real things?" The bear shuffled its alternatives. "Real things are good." "I wonder if time is good. I don't think Mummy likes time very much. The other day, lots of days ago, she said that time went by her. Is time real, Teddy?”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You and I are real, Teddy, aren't we?" The bear's eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. "You and I are real, David." It specialized in comfort.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm no good, Teddy. Let's run away!" "You're a very good boy. Your Mummy loves you." Slowly, he shook his head. "If she loved me, then why can't I talk to her?" "You're being silly, David. Mummy's lonely. That's why she had you." "She's got Daddy. I've got nobody 'cept you, and I'm lonely.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Synthetic life-forms were less than ten years old, the old android mechanicals less than sixteen; the faults of their systems were still being ironed out, year by year.”
Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source