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Fritz Leiber

142 quotes

“The only thing robots couldn’t do, it seemed, was sit in foxholes. That was one place where Phil recalled no mechanical competition.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They sat in small parties with a truculent quietness that sneered at and challenged the frantic hustle of the times and the belief that the hustle was leading anywhere.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What have I always told you about Soldiers? The bigger the gripe, the smaller the cause! It is infallible!”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know only too well from a personal experience that is number one on my list of things to be forgotten.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s this mucking inefficiency and death of the cosmos — and don’t tell me that isn’t in the cards! — masquerading as benign omniscient authority.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the wake of a Big Change, cultures and individuals are transposed, it’s true, yet in the main they continue much as they were, except for the usual scattering of unfortunate but statistically meaningless accidents.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are and if the whole past wasn’t once entirely different from anything we remember, and we’ve forgotten that we forgot.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poets are wiser than anyone because they’re the only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, if you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosmos itself.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight of the past’s mistakes and the future’s fears.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone?”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humans aren’t as you idealized them, Blanda. Humans are dream-killers. They took the bubbles out of soapsuds, Blanda, and called it detergent. They took the moonlight out of romance and called it sex.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Excuse me, Gaspard,” Flaxman interjected, “but would you mind turning the emotional down and the factual up?”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Their feeble attempts to appear concerned only made them look to him more like two fat cats full of stolen cream and with a map of the secret tunnel leading to the meat locker tucked inside their fur vests.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How like humans,” he said drily. “The universe is vast, majestic, intricate, patterned with inexhaustible beauty, vivid with infinitely varied life—and there’s only one thing in it that really interests you. The same thing that makes you buy books, build families, create atomic theories (I imagine) or, once upon a time, write poetry. Sex.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To Space-Age man, every mystery is a greed-magnet.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I abominate any organization that denies cats are people!”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was always worth everything to get away by himself, climb a bit, and study the heavens.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was always something new to be seen in the unchanging night sky.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They’ve heard about space but they still don’t believe in it. They haven’t been out here to see for themselves that there isn’t any giant elephant under the earth, holding it up, and a giant tortoise holding up the elephant. If I say “planet” and “spaceship” to them, they still think “horoscope” and “flying saucer”.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Devils may be nothing but beings intent on their purpose, which now happens to collide with yours.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not for the first time Richard reflected that this age’s vaunted ‘communications industry’ had chiefly provided people and nations with the means of frightening to death and simultaneously boring to extinction themselves and each other.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was an omnipresent sense of crisis.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greater the variety of intelligent life Don saw, the more he became sensitive to its presence.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Paul stared out at the randomly scattered, lonely stars and wondered why he had always so easily accepted that they represented order.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then time seemed to stop, or rather to lose its directional urgency of movement; it became a place in the open where one stood rather than a low, narrow corridor down which one was hurried.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The gods spend the wealth the universe gathers, they scan the wonders and fling them to nothingness. That’s why they’re the gods! I told you they were devils.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What do you care? You always liked loneliness better than you liked people. No offence — liking yourself’s the beginning of all love.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science has only increased the area of the unknown. And if there is a God, her name is Mystery.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know, all insanity is a form of artistic expression, I often think. Only the person has nothing but himself to work with—he can’t get at outside materials to manipulate them—so he puts all his art into his behavior.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was funny, though, how the human mind would cast doubt even on itself in order to explain away unusual and unconventional things it had seen vividly and unmistakably. It left you in the middle, the human mind did.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am up to date only sporadically. I live firmly in the world of art, where reality and fantasy are one.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now as for thinking your account a tale or story, my dear Franz, to be a good story is to me the highest the highest test of the truth of anything. I make no distinction whatever between reality and fantasy, or the objective and the subjective. All life and all awareness are ultimately one, including intensest pain and death itself. Not all the play need please us, and ends are never comforting. Some things fit together harmoniously and beautifully and startlingly with thrilling discords—those are true—and some do not, and those are merely bad art.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think all modern cities, especially the crass, newly built, highly industrial ones, should have ghosts. They are a civilizing influence.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What was the whole literature of supernatural horror but an essay to make death itself exciting?—wonder and strangeness to life’s very end.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’ve got to believe there’s some sort of sense in everything that crazies say.” “Crazies?” “All of us.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Besides, what difference did if make if there had been two genuine coincidences? The universe was full of them. Every molecular collision was a coincidence. You could pile a thousand coincidences on top of another, he averred, and not get Tom Digby one step nearer to believing in the supernatural. Oh, he knew intelligent people enough, all right, who coddled such beliefs. Some of his best friends liked to relate “yarns” and toy with eerie possibilities for the sake of a thrill. But the only emotion Tom ever got out of such stuff was a nauseating disgust. It cut too deep for joking. It was a reversion to that primitive, fear-bound ignorance from which science had slowly lifted man, inch by inch, against the most bitter opposition.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Hill and the Hole” (p. 165); originally published in Unknown Worlds, August 1942
“I’ve never found anything in occult literature that seemed to have a bearing. You know, the occult—very much like stories of supernatural horror—is a sort of game. Most religions, too. Believe in the game and accept its rules—or the premises of the story—and you can have the thrills or whatever it is you’re after. Accept the spirit world and you can see ghosts and talk to the dear departed. Accept Heaven and you can have the hope of eternal life and the reassurance of an all-powerful god working on your side. Accept Hell and you can have devils and demons, if that’s what you want. Accept—if only for story purposes—witchcraft, druidism, shamanism, magic or some modern variant and you can have werewolves, vampires, elementals. Or believe in the influence and power of a grave, an ancient house or monument, a dead religion, or an old stone with an inscription on it—and you can have inner things of the same general sort. But I’m thinking of the kind of horror—and wonder too, perhaps—that lies beyond any game, that’s bigger than any game, that’s fettered by no rules, conforms to no man-made theology, bows to no charms or protective rituals, that strides the world unseen and strikes without warning where it will, much the same as (though it’s of a different order of existence than all of these) lightning or the plague or the enemy atom bomb. The sort of horror that the whole fabric of civilization was designed to protect us from and make us forget. The horror about which all man’s learning tells us nothing.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Bit of the Dark World” (pp. 261-262); originally published in Fantastic, February 1962
“Now when I was corresponding with Lovecraft I was very enthusiastic about Fort’s books, and without thinking twice, I wrote him about how the man had brought to light facts that science had neglected or denied. Whereupon Lovecraft courteously explain to me how scientists cannot accept “new facts” on the basis of single or scattered reports, even by competent technicians and observers, and that experiments or observations must be repeatable—there must be general agreement—before they can become part of the body of scientific knowledge. And this is quite true, of course. Scientists don’t arrive at the truth by inward certainty or by majority vote, but they do demonstrate it to each other (and to other men) by open and rational procedures. If an experiment or observation can’t be repeated, it can’t be accepted, no matter how great the reputation, scientific or otherwise, of the man who says he did it or saw it; the matter must then be tabled as an anecdote (perhaps an extremely interesting one) but unproven (it’s very much like that Scottish criminal-law verdict) until new evidence comes in, if ever. (That’s why, incidentally, there can’t be a true science of history, or of artistic creation, or a lot of other things; you can’t repeat the past to verify it; nor can you go back and rewrite Hamlet to check up.)”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So tell me, giant philosopher, why we’re not dukes,” the Gray Mouser demanded, unrolling a forefinger from the fist on his knee so that it pointed across the brazier at Fafhrd. “Or emperors, for that matter, or demigods.” “We are not dukes because we’re no man’s man,” Fafhrd replied smugly, setting his shoulders against the stone horse-trough. “Even the duke must butter up a king, and demigods the gods. We butter no one. We so our own way, choosing our own adventures—and our own follies! Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.” “There speaks the hound turned out by his last master and not yet found new boots to slaver on,” the Mouser retorted with comradely sardonic impudence.”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For a full century now Americans have been living in one of those ages of collective madness and herd delusion, comparable only to the Dutch tulip mania, the witchcraft dread, the dancing madness, Trotskyism, and the Crusades. Until 1950 ours might have been called the Automobile Mania, but now the imagination can only grope for a name—I’m writing an unpopular book on the subject, you see. Not that this current social madness is a deep secret or anything to be startled at. What other results could have been expected when American society began to overvalue on the one hand security, censorship, an imagined world-saving idealism and self-sacrifice in war, and on the other hand insatiable hunger for possessions, fiercely competitive aggressiveness, sadistic male belligerence, contempt for parents and the state, and a fantastically overstimulated sexuality?”
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source