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Murray Leinster
54 quotes
“My specialty is the mechanics of research. But I test my theories about how to make discoveries by using them to make discoveries.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’ve got an impossible job on my hands,” he told them, “and if I succeed at it, there’s an inconceivable one to follow.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My purpose is not to make profits, but to keep people from being killed. Quaint, eh? But I’m one of the people I don’t want killed.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logics don’t work good on women. Only on things that make sense.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her eyes upon him were soft. Civilized people act upon intellectualized motives. They decide what is wise, and sometimes do it. But when they are swayed by purest primitive instincts they are usually happier. Hana was responding to one of the most ancient of all known human impulses—admiration of a proved warrior.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And, just as she had responded to primitive prowess, so Ron reacted to feminine admiration by an enormously increased urge to accomplish.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Put dispassionately,” said Haynes cheerfully, “you sound like you’re crazy. But you’re stating facts. Okay so far.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Aliens, p. 113 (originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947).
“The unfamiliar is not necessarily unreasonable.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lon frowned. “They’re so far ahead of us,” he said uneasily, “that they could conquer us if they wanted to. And that’s bad!” “Lon!” said the older man severely. “They’re civilized! Civilized men don’t want to conquer other men!”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The secret of getting along with people is that of postponing quarrels.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He’d caused the First Native War on Mars, by taking advantage of the fact that at that time human law had not defined the killing of Martians as murder.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Aliens, p. 92 (originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1957).
“Lane understood. Burke was one of that considerable part of humanity which enthusiastically believes in anything that’s sufficiently dramatic.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Herb doctor is the polite term used by witch doctors when they advertise their services in newspapers. It is commonly believed that they can relieve all situations not caused by a judge or a grand jury.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And this was no observation by a mere human, who might delude himself. This was a report from complex electronic devices. It was images formed on phosphors coated on radar screen tubes, excited by accelerated electrons whose pattern of impact was governed by echoes from the original of the image. Phosphors do not imagine. Electrons are not affected by panic. As a radar image it was a faithful report—in its own terms, without interpretation—of something that actually was.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He signed himself prince of this, lord of that, baron of the other thing and claimant to the dukedom of something else.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was a beautiful row. You’ve really scared people, Hoddan! You deserve well of the republic! Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Again time passed. In one of the remoter galaxies a supernova flamed, and on a rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed experimentally—and to mankind the one event was just as important as the other.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He irritably suspected himself of a tendency to make enemies unnecessarily.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This was the second time in his life he’d been on a horse. It was two too many.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are wonderful!” she said with conviction. “I used to cherish that illusion myself,” said Hoddan.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It couldn’t happen! Hoddan couldn’t conceive of such a thing. But a recently developed pessimism suggested that since everything else, to date, had been to his disadvantage, this was probably a catastrophe also.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You’ve got to do something!” insisted Fani. “I saw Father talking to them! He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he’s planning some skulduggery!”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hoddan felt the anger any man feels when he sees betrayal of that honor a competent machine represents.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He needed some rather extensive changes in the relationship of the cosmos to himself.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Twilight remained, a fairy half-light in which all things looked much more charming than they really were.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But it might not be true enough. It might be less than...well...sufficiently true in a particular instance.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse where women are concerned.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He’d gone to Walden in the hope of achievement. There, of course, he failed because in a free economy industrialists consider that freedom is the privilege to be stupid without penalty. In other than free economies, of course, stupidity is held to be the duty of administrators. But Hoddan now believed himself in the fascinating situation of having knowledge and abilities which were needed by people who knew their need.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was in a state of doubt which passed very well for modesty.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hoddan fumbled for her meaning. It wasn’t quite an apology for trying to get him killed. But at least it was a disclaimer of future intentions in that direction.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They raise the question of whether I’ve been crazy, and am suddenly sane, or whether I’ve been sane up to now, and have suddenly gone crazy.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eminent men were called on to take command and arrange suitable measures. They immediately acted as eminent men so often do; they took action to retain their eminence. Their first instinct was caution. When a man is important enough, it does not matter if he never does anything. It is only required of him that he do nothing wrong. Eminent figures all over the world prepared to do nothing wrong. They were not so concerned to do anything right.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was bitter resistance to the idea. It was demanded that Burke justify his views in a more reasonable way than by mere demonstration that they worked.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a young man he was considered promising. If he had been interested in such matters, he might have had a moderately successful career in politics, as politics was practiced in his nation. But he liked things. Real things.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It isn’t reasonable!” insisted Holmes. “It doesn’t make sense!” “The question,” observed Burke, “isn’t whether it makes sense, but whether it’s fact.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For once, no eminent figure assumed the undignified pose involved in standing on one’s dignity.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most men develop convictions about the cosmos and such beliefs come in two varieties. One kind is a conviction that the cosmos does not make sense. That it exists by chance and changes by chance and human beings do not matter. This view produces a fine complacency. The other kind is a belief that the cosmos does make sense, and was designed with the idea that people were going to live in it, and that what they do and what happens to them is important. This theory seems to be depressing.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is never a rational reason for a man to rejoice that a certain pretty girl exists and that he has found her. The experience, however, is universal.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It isn’t illegal to buy an artist’s work for peanuts and sell it again at any price one can get. But it is an outrage!”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was totally unrealistic to think that because there had been wildly unlikely coincidences in the immediate past, that there would be more wildly unlikely ones turning up in orderly succession. Yet...”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've never noticed that being nonsensical keeps things from happening. Don’t you ever read about politics?”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’re fools!” said Harrison. “Morons! Idiots!” “If you speak of my altruism,” said Pepe cheerfully, “I agree. But if you speak of your interest in a very pretty girl, then I point out that nobody is ever as happy as while he is making a fool of himself over a woman.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a symptom of the insanity of human beings in a cosmos obviously designed for them to live in, but which they industriously prepare to make unlivable.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Desolate and dreary as the little town was in the world of today, it was infinitely more liveable than the same town of nearly two centuries before. There had been much progress in how to do things. It was regrettable that there was less progress in knowledge of things worth doing.”
Murray Leinster (1896–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source