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Olaf Stapledon

111 quotes

“Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered eyes, and slept again.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Socrates woke to the ideal of dispassionate intelligence, Jesus to the ideal of passionate yet self-oblivious worship. Socrates urged intellectual integrity, Jesus integrity of will. Each, of course, though starting with a different emphasis, involved the other. Unfortunately both these ideals demanded of the human brain a degree of vitality and coherence of which the nervous system of the First Men was never really capable.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the months of agony advanced, there was bred in the warring peoples a genuine and even passionate will for peace and a united world. Out of the conflict of the tribes arose, at least for a while, a spirit loftier than tribalism. But this fervour lacked as yet clear guidance, lacked even the courage of conviction.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In some minds the defence of the human spirit was sincerely identified with the defence of a particular nation, conceived as the home of all enlightenment.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The economic life of the human race had for some time been based on coal, but latterly oil had been found a far more convenient source of power; and as the oil store of the planet was much smaller than its coal store, and the expenditure of oil had of course been wholly uncontrolled and wasteful, a shortage was already being felt. Thus the national ownership of the remaining oil fields had become a main factor in politics and a fertile source of wars.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was, indeed, a time when China had mentally less in common with India than with the West, but fear of America had drawn the two great Eastern peoples together. They agreed at least in earnest hate of that strange blend of the commercial traveller, the missionary, and the barbarian conqueror, which was the American abroad.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The governments hated the peace party even more than each other, since their existence now depended on war.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At first it had been youth's ideal of what youth should be, a pattern woven of fanatical loyalty, irresponsible gaiety, comradeship, physical gusto, and not a little pure devilry.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religion finally severed the unity which all willed but none could trust. An heroic nation of monotheists sought to impose its faith on a vaguely pantheist world. For the first and last time the Second Men stumbled into a world-wide civil war; and just because the war was religious it developed a brutality hitherto unknown.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he most precious gift that a lover could bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union, it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The finds were of extreme interest to the Second Men, but not in the manner which the Siberian party had intended, not as a store of scientific and philosophic truth, but as a vivid historical document. The view of the universe which the tablets recorded was both too naïve and too artificial; but the insight which they afforded into the mind of the earlier species was invaluable.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nations appeared, and all the phobias that make up nationalism.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can only point out that, the higher a mind’s development, the more it discovers in the universe to occupy it.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In their brief primitive phase, the Fifth Men, like so many other races, sought to console themselves by unreasoning faith in a life after death, They conceived, for instance, that at death terrestrial beings embarked upon a career continuous with earthly life, but far more ample, either in some remote planetary system, or in some wholly distinct orb of space-time. But though such theories were never disproved in the primitive era, they gradually began to seem not merely improbable but ignoble.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Little by little it became evident that those who used great gifts, and even genius, to establish the truth of the after life, or to seek contact with their beloved dead, suffered from a strange blindness, and obtuseness of the spirit.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Very seldom, only in rare moments of clarity, only after ages of misapprehension, did a few of them, here and there, now and again, begin to have the deeper insight into the world’s nature and man’s. And no sooner had this precious insight begun to propagate itself, than it would be blotted out by some small or great disaster, by epidemic disease, by the spontaneous disruption of society, by an access of racial imbecility, by a prolonged bombardment of meteorites, or by the mere cowardice and vertigo that dared not look down the precipice of fact.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Seventh Men were completely without interest in the universal and the unseen. The beauty which they sought to create was ephemeral and very largely sensuous. And they were well content that it should be so. Personal immortality, said a dying sage, would be as tedious as an endless song.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus the whole duration of humanity, with its many sequent species and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Myriads of individuals, each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse with one another, contribute their heart’s pulses to the universal music, and presently vanish, giving place to others. All this age-long sequence of private living, which is the actual tissue of humanity’s flesh, I cannot describe. I can only trace, as it were, the disembodied form of its growth.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yet though time is cyclic, it is not repetitive; there is no other time within which it can repeat itself.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]his is the goal of all living, that the cosmos may be known, and admired, and that it may be crowned with further beauties. Nowhere and at no time, so far as we can tell, at least within our own galaxy, has the adventure reached further than in ourselves. And in us, what has been achieved is but a minute beginning. But it is a real beginning.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons you.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had now to select that mode of the primitive which is distinctive of your own species, a mode characterized by repressed sexuality, excessive self-regard, and an intelligence which is both rudimentary and in bondage to unruly cravings.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Grotesque sentiments such as the lust of business success or economic power of any kind, and indeed every purely self-regarding passion, from that of the social climber to that of the salvation-seeking ascetic, are experienced by the explorer with something of that shame which the child, emerging into adolescence, may feel toward the still-clinging fascination of his outgrown toys, or with such disgust as the youth may feel when he wakes from some unworthy sexual infatuation”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In time, of course, Paul's day world ceased to be flat, and became a huge ball. At this stage the universe was more like a dumpling than a sandwich. Vaguely Paul still conceived the three levels of existence. The nether night was deep down within the ball of the day world. The starry night was all around it. On the ball were all the countries except Fairyland, which was nowhere.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have touched filth.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Behold the sons of men.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chapter IV: Paul comes of age”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If ever they are put to the test, they shy away, affirming that nationalism is 'practical', cosmopolitanism but a remote ideal. Though they see it intellectually, their hearts are not capable of responding to it. If ever the nation is in danger, their cosmopolitanism evaporates, and they stand for the nation in the good old style. Yet intellectually they know that in their modem world this way leads to disaster.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Without Satan, with God only, how poor a universe, how trite a music!”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he thought is somewhat repugnant to us that we should slowly sink into barbarism, into the sub-human, into blind and whimpering agony, that the last of Man should be a whine. This may well happen, but even by such a prospect we are not seriously dismayed. If it does occur, it will doubtless seem intolerable to our degraded spirits. But today, we are fully possessed of ourselves. (...) [T]o the spirit that has drunk deeply of the grave beauty of the cosmos, even the ultimate horror is acceptable.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great world to which I am native has long ago outgrown the myths, the toys, the bogies of your infant world. There, one lives without the fear of death and pain, though there one dies and suffers. There, one knows no lust to triumph over other men, no fear of being enslaved. There one loves without craving to possess, worships without thought of salvation, contemplates without pride of spirit. There one is free as none in your world is free, yet obedient as none of you is obedient.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Year by year, month by month, the plight of our fragmentary and precarious civilization becomes more serious. Fascism abroad grows more bold and ruthless in its foreign ventures, more tyrannical toward its own citizens, more barbarian in its contempt for the life of the mind. Even in our own country we have reason to fear a tendency toward militarization and the curtailment of civil liberty. Moreover, while the decades pass, no resolute step is taken to alleviate the injustice of our social order. Our outworn economic system dooms millions to frustration.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The universe now appeared to me as a void wherein floated rare flakes of snow, each flake a universe.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sheer beauty of our planet surprised me. It was a huge pearl, set in spangled ebony. It was nacreous, it was an opal. No, it was far more lovely than any jewel. Its patterned colouring was more subtle, more ethereal. It displayed the delicacy and brilliance, the intricacy and harmony of a live thing. Strange that in my remoteness I seemed to feel, as never before, the vital presence of Earth as of a creature alive but tranced and obscurely yearning to wake.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Was man indeed, as he sometimes desired to be, the growing point of the cosmical spirit, in its temporal aspect at least? Or was he one of many million growing points? Or was mankind of no more importance in the universal view than rats in a cathedral? And again, was man’s true function power, or wisdom, or love, or worship, or all of all these? Or was the idea of function, of purpose, meaningless in relation to the cosmos? These grave questions I would answer.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I began to lose heart. The appalling desert of darkness and barren fire, the huge emptiness so sparsely pricked with scintillations, the colossal futility of the whole universe, hideously oppressed me.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This kind of internal "telepathic" intercourse, which was to serve me in all my wanderings, was at first difficult, ineffective, and painful. But in time I came to be able to live through the experiences of my host with vividness and accuracy, while yet preserving my own individuality, my own critical intelligence, my own desires and fears. Only when the other had come to realize my presence within him could he, by a special act of volition, keep particular thoughts secret from me.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I spent on the Other Earth many "other years," wandering from mind to mind and country to country, but I did not gain any clear understanding of the psychology of the Other Men and the significance of their history till I encountered one of their philosophers, an aging but still vigorous man whose eccentric and unpalatable views had prevented him from attaining eminence.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Militarists also were strongly opposed to the new invention; for in the cheap and efficient production of illusory sexual embraces they saw a danger even more serious than contraception. The supply of cannon-fodder would decline.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Radio, which formerly had been the main force making for cosmopolitanism, became suddenly in each country the main stimulus to nationalism. Morning, noon and night, every civilized people was assured that enemies, whose flavor was of course subhuman and foul, were plotting its destruction. Armament scares, spy stories, accounts of the barbarous and sadistic behavior of neighboring peoples, created in every country such uncritical suspicion and hate that war became inevitable...All thought of human brotherhood, and even of personal safety, was swept away by a savage blood-lust.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though all were devout, and blasphemy was regarded with horror, the general attitude to the deity was one of blasphemous commercialism.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Increasingly I suspected that this race, in spite of all its triumphs, was now living on the great ideas of its past, mouthing concepts that it no longer had the sensibility to understand, paying verbal homage to ideals which it could no longer sincerely will, and behaving within a system of institutions many of which could only be worked successfully by minds of a slightly finer temper.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only in couples and in little circles of companions could they support true community, the communion of mutual insight and respect and love. But in their tribes and nations they conceived all too easily the sham community of the pack, baying in unison of fear and hate.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The precept, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” breeds in us most often the disposition to see one’s neighbor merely as a poor imitation of oneself, and to hate him if he proves different.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under the pressure of a war to the death, all that was best, all that was most human and gentle on each side was crushed out by military necessity. On the one side, the passion for a unified world, where every individual should live a free and full life in service of the world community, was overcome by the passion to punish spies, traitors, and heretics. On the other, vague and sadly misguided yearnings for a nobler, less materialistic life were cleverly transformed by the reactionary leaders into vindictiveness against the revolutionaries.”
Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source