Sign in with your pod

Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina

Sheri S. Tepper

404 quotes

• “Such plagues are known to arise spontaneously on overcrowded planets,” Jory commented. “When any environment exceeds its carrying capacity, plagues begin to manifest themselves, though humans are always surprised when it happens.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I don’t need you to believe. I can make you do what I say even if you don’t believe.” A sulky-sounding voice, this. “God doesn’t need to prove anything, not if god can make people do what god wants.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is better to die than to be used by evil for evil’s purposes.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Whoever…whatever had done this was an evil person, an evil thing, and she, Fringe, would have to do whatever she could to set matters right, diversity be damned!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I meant the petitions to provoke thought, to create discussion, but I underestimated the inertia in the system. I forgot that inertia is what bureaucracies are all about!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Here priests and prophets are doing what priests and prophets have always done, forbidding their people to become anything except what they already are! No interference. God, what foolishness!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Jory continued in a lecturer’s tone. “Old women like us, Cafferty, are left here to die. It would not be fitting for them to die where men who don’t own them might look upon them—and of course their owners don’t want to look at them—so they die here, where none see them. The religion of Thrasis prohibits murder. They are merely given no food or water and left to the mercy of the Thrasian God.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If we can.” “No matter if you can or not. You must.” Anger bested her. “That’s not logical. That’s completely arbitrary. To demand that someone do something he may not be able to do.” “We have consulted Files.” The voice bubbled with hideous laughter. “Gods often demand that people do things they cannot do or things that are dangerous or onerous or hateful. And when the people fail, gods punish them. Should I be less a god than they?”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The show,” Aunt Sizzy was want to say, “may not have to go on, but we don’t buy groceries unless it does!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Think of how much time and effort it would have saved if we’d only known what man’s destiny actually was. Think of our time, all the fundamentalist fascists versus the civil libertines; all the liberals throwing our money at the poor versus the conservatives throwing our money at themselves; all the male versus female controversies, all the revolutions, sexual, political, and economic. How marvelous if we’d only known what was important and what wasn’t!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Oh, yes,” murmured Nela. “The only excuse we had for overpopulating our world was that it wouldn’t matter in heaven.” She tried to laugh but couldn’t manage it. The laugh turned into a sob.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We Enforcers have a saying: ‘the right help helps, and enough help helps, but help that’s in time helps most.’”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Afar, Legless God Orimar Breaze howled rage and resentment of this nonsense. There were only two classes of beings: adorers or persecutors.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Breaze had decided that he would require his followers to believe illogical things as evidence of their faith. He would require them to believe that Breaze had created Elsewhere and all its people in one day, out of nothing, exactly one thousand years ago! But… (a master stroke) he would leave evidence in Files to contradict this! Thus they would have to disbelieve the evidence of their own senses in order to believe in Breaze! When he got to this point, a small voice asked why he had given men such senses in the first place? Why had he given them intelligence if he intended to forbid its use?”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Things are as they are, and no amount of wishful thinking will change them!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Man has always tortured in the name of his gods and committed atrocities in the name of his culture.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Love cannot be owed,” said the retreating shadow. “It can only be given.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The Ultimate Destiny of Man is to stop being only man.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The sidesaddle was designed to protect a maiden’s virginity, while risking the maiden’s neck. Rather much for rather little, I thought.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Much of life,” he said to me, “depends on our being ignorant of reality. If we understood reality, we would never go on.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Men are like that. They marry for reasons that have nothing to do with what they expect from matrimony and then damn their wives for not being what they want later. They marry for beauty and charm and sex, and then expect their wives to be sensible, parsimonious and efficient.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I have noticed that cats are little impressed by religion.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Fairy things don’t impress cats. Fairy things and holy things. Cats are, perhaps, a separate creation.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I learned very soon there was nothing beautiful in that place. Even the things they watched were not beautiful. There was no contrast between beauty and ugliness. There was only ugliness. I suppose it was more practical for them. If there had been any beauty at all, people might have wanted that instead. As it was, they didn’t know there was any such thing, so the lack did not bother them.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “According to Mama, nine-tenths of King Arthur was questing and the other tenth was politics.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “She likes warmth and frequent good food, and, most of all, fucking. She does not read, does not think, does not care. She would ride twenty miles in bad weather for her lust’s sake, and would not walk twenty paces down a hallway to do a kindness. She emptied her ashes, not out of any sense of cleanliness, but only so her fire would burn so she could be warm. If she wants something, she could kill to get it, and if she does not want something, it might as well not exist so far as she is concerned.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I had told myself it was God’s will when it was nothing of the kind. It was only man’s stupidity.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “And when a man or a woman climbs, Beauty, he or she can end up as high as the angels or higher.” “The saints,” I nodded, thinking I knew. “Oh, saints,” Puck said. “Whsst. Saints! Martyrs and virgins and what all. Relics in churches, and both the relic and the churches dead as brass. No. I’ll tell you who climbs. Gardeners climb. And farmers. And painters. And poets. People who build beautiful things without destroying to do it.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Faery is dying from being too few. We need to mix more, to value our children more. Men have too many of them, they’re cheap. The Sidhe have too few, and they seek them like treasure. Man needs what Faery has to give. Fewer children. Longer lives. Less speed. More thought. Mystery and wonder and glamour built in, so to speak, through the slow creation of marvelous things. Less haste and destruction. More appreciation for what’s been given. Like man and Faery were two halves of one thing.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There’s some who say magic came from nature, and with men destroying nature right and left, there’s not enough of it left.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Then, suddenly, I got old. Up until a year or two ago, I wasn’t…didn’t feel old at all.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “On the front page of the newspaper tonight is the announcement of a Mother of the Year Award, given to a mother of eleven children. I wonder what Father Raymond would say? Her eleven children can eat hamburger made from cows who are fed the ephemeral grass that comes after rainforest is cut and burned. They can breathe the already polluted air. They can look forward to growing up and having spaces of their own in the new prefabricated apartment houses now being built in Japan which give each renter one hundred fifty square feet.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Others are here, many of them from the twentieth. Those who forbade birth control and abortion, worshiping the fetus over all other of God’s creations. They are here in their vestments, their religious garb, their Sunday robes or their everyday dress, carrying their picket signs in swollen and endless parturition, for so the Dark Lord commands that they shall be, endlessly pregnant, endlessly giving birth, endlessly suckling the demonic life that burgeons out of them, with no choice in the matter.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Innocence. Gone, forever, with the unthinkable and the unspeakable. And innocent laughter gone as well. Now only the dirty giggle, the wicked snigger, the game of out-grossing, the playtime of the beasts. So that when the real death stalks When the real horror begins It will all be familiar and we will be able to enjoy it.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is no innocence so deep as to veil the urgencies of the flesh from one’s own youthful awareness.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “She sighed. “Things the Creator Himself made have perished, Beauty, because of what someone else does. The Holy One makes a tree that lives for four thousand years, and someone chops it down to make paper to package chewing gum. The Creator makes whales who sing in the deep, and men kill them to put their oil in lipsticks.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Thread and needles. To sew, so Mama had said, a cap of wisdom, a thinking cap. If one wanted a thinking cap. Mama hadn’t. Wisdom was the curse of man, she said. In seeking wisdom we had lost our heritage. I didn’t believe that. We hadn’t sought wisdom diligently enough, that’s how we’d lost our heritage. We preferred cleverness to wisdom. Instead of seeking the truth, we had preferred to believe in easy certainties. Always so much easier to take the lazy, easy way and then pretend God had commanded it.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I wept a time for Mama and for Israfel, but weeping does no good, does it? Sitting down and weeping is what women have done for centuries, and it has done no good at all. Nor praying. God has given us the earth. He is not waiting in the next room, ready to fix it for us if we ruin it. If we do not care for it, no one will. On other worlds, other races of men perhaps do better than we have done. He cares for us, but he does not control what we do.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you are less uncontrolled, you won’t find yourself rolling around on the floor making infant noises and attracting the scorn and derision of your fellows.” “Damn motherfuckers ain my fellows.” “What did you say?” “I said I feel little collegiality for those sharing my conditions of servitude.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Go to the simul and slap people around, kill people, that’s what you want. Do it! But you can’t do it out here!” It sounded great, but nobody stayed dead in a simul! How could you get any satisfaction killing somebody who didn’t stay dead?”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Tell them they may go. I don’t approve of anything they’re doing.” Angered, the minister growled: “The Firster godmongers pray for you daily in your blindness, Majesty. Man is meant to procreate! We were given the universe to fill. What are a few animals, a few trees in the face of our destiny?”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Blind faith in somebody stepping in to fix things eliminates a lot of emotional stress, so blind faith is what most people have!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The first rule of governance is never to choose who to sacrifice,” snarled the Procurator. “Or, at least, never to be seen to choose. Death and dismemberment must always be…inadvertent. Everybody’s fault or nobody’s fault!”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Fearful people develop their religions as protective devices, ways to manipulate hostile environments, formulas for identifying and defeating their enemies. The more fearful people are, the more enemies they have, the more adversarial language they use.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Also, the god often resembles his followers in behavior and feelings. Angry people have angry gods and vindictive people have vindictive gods, and so forth.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Does the worm on the hook expect to be rescued simply because the fish have eaten all the other worms?”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Sex was pleasurable, sure, but survival was sweeter still.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “An itchy man is prey to discontent; he’ll suage his flea bites with the blood of kings.” Surely the common man wouldn’t want that!” “What common men want most is beer and sex, without disturbances.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Even pain,” said the king, with no intention of being prophetic, “even pain is preferable to dying of unrelieved ennui.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What he’d said wasn’t inaccurate; it was simply a ridiculous understatement.”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

More