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

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Theodore Sturgeon

51 quotes

“Faith is a beautiful thing. So are forest fires, and the color of gangrene. I think faith—especially capital-F Faith—is more dangerous and more disgusting than either. It is a substitute for thought.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How to Avoid a Hole in the Head, in Marvel Science Stories (May 1951), p. 115
“I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of it is crud. The Revelation: Ninety percent of everything is crud. Corollary 1: The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere. Corollary 2: The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Venture Science Fiction (March 1958) The original expression of this has often been declared to have been "Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud." According…
“A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Issue at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction (1964) by James Blish, p. 14
“If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Title of story about the incest taboo and social pathologies in the anthology Dangerous Visions (1967) by Harlan Ellison.
“Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called "other", which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's the simple things that are really effective. Try to remember that.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Spoken by Professor Thaddeus MacIlhainy Nudnick. Reprinted in Microcosmic God: Volume II: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (1995), edited by Paul Williams, , p. 322
“That Heel. That lousy wart on the nose of progress.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Spoken by Hughie McCauley, quoting fictional space-opera hero Captain Jaundess. Reprinted in Microcosmic God: Volume II: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (1995), edited by Paul Williams, , p. 322
“In its shelter they developed a weapon. What is was we shall never know, and our race will live—or we shall know, and our race will perish as theirs perished.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had been released with alacrity from the office because of his propensity for small office politics. It was a game he still played, and completely aside from his boiled-looking red face and his slightly womanish walk, he was out of place in the field, for boot-licking and back-stabbing accomplish even less out on the field than they do in an office.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And those he met who had been hurt by war and who still hated the late enemy—those who would have been happy to go back and kill some more, reckoning vital risk well worth it—those he considered mad, and forgot them.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have been curious about how much personal motive you had for your work. I think that answers it pretty well. I think, too, that you believe what you are saying. Do you know that people who do things for impersonal motives are as rare as fur on a fish?”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Show me a nagging woman and I’ll show you one who hasn’t enough to worry about.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Metallurgy! A girl like you mucking about with molybs and durals instead of heartbeats and hope chests!” “Mother, sweetheart, hasn’t occurred to you at all that I don’t want to get married? Not yet, anyway.” “Of course it has. That doesn’t alter the fact that a woman is only forty percent a woman until someone loves her, and only eighty percent a woman until she has children. As for you and your precious career, I seem to remember something about a certain Marie Sklodowska who didn’t mind marrying a fellow called Curie, science or no science.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh well. Chacun à son goût, as they say, which means—” And she stopped me. “Please. Don’t translate. It couldn’t be phrased as well in English.” I had been about to say “—which means Jack’s son has the gout.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Half of humanity doesn’t know what it wants or how to find out. The other half knows what it wants, hasn’t got it, and is going crazy trying to convince itself that it already has it.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I remember wondering smokily whether anyone ever loves a person. People seem to love dreams instead, and for the lucky ones, the person is close to the dream. But it’s a dream all the same, a sticky dream. You unload the person, and the dream stays with you.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Besides, money settles nothing. A little is never enough and helps only until it is gone. A little more puts real solutions a bit further into the future. A whole lot buries the real problem, where it lives like a cancer or a carcinogen.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for the research, much of it was theory and argumentation; the subject, like reincarnation, seemed to attract zealots of the most positive and verbose varieties, both pro and con.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God,” he cries, dying on Mars, “God, we made it!”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idiot heard the sounds, but they had no meaning for him. He lived inside somewhere, apart, and the little link between word and significance hung broken.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s this about a farm: when the market’s good there’s money, and when it’s bad there’s food.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So it was that Lone came to know himself; and like the handful of people who have done so before him he found, at this pinnacle, the rugged foot of a mountain.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s fairly common. We don’t believe anything we don’t want to believe.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logic and truth are two very different things, but they often look the same to the mind that’s performing the logic.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reality isn’t the most pleasant of atmospheres, Lieutenant. But we like to think we’re engineered for it. It’s a pretty fine piece of engineering, the kind an engineer can respect. Drag in an obsession and reality can’t tolerate it. Something has to give; if reality goes, your fine piece of engineering is left with nothing to operate on. So it operates badly. So kick the obsession out; start functioning the way you were designed to function.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love’s a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Morals: They’re nothing but a coded survival instinct!”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you know what morals are? Morals are an obedience to rules that people laid down to help you live among them.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An ethic isn’t a fact you can look up. It’s a way of thinking.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most human thing about anyone is a thing he learns and … and earns. It’s a thing he can’t have when he’s very young; if he gets it at all, he gets it after a long search and a deep conviction. After that it’s truly part of him as long as he lives.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here, too, was the guide, the beacon, for such times as humanity might be in danger; here was the Guardian of Whom all humans knew — not an exterior force, nor an awesome Watcher in the sky, but a laughing thing with a human heart and a reverence for its human origins, smelling of sweat and new-turned earth rather than suffused with the pale odor of sanctity.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wouldn’t give you sand if I met you on the beach.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This country has music through its blood and bones like a disease, and a man cannot draw in a breath of air that isn’t a-thrum with it.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man with talent eats, sweats, and cares for his children like any other. And if talent is a natural thing, remember that water is also, and fire, and wind; therefore flood and holocaust and hurricane are as natural as talent, and can consume and destroy you.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love, Caroline, isn’t…that. Love is everything else that can be between a man and a woman, without that.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are always many ways to accomplish anything, but only one of them is really best. Which of them is best—that is the source of all argument on the production of anything, the creator of factions among the designers, and the first enemy of speed and efficiency.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have questions—urgent questions—I know that. And what makes them urgent is that you have in your mind the answers you want to hear. You will be more and more angry if you do not get those answers, but some can’t be given as you would hear them, because they would not be true.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And Charlie asked questions! His unease had long since disappeared, and two of his most deep-dyed characteristics took over: one, the result of his omnivorous, undisciplined, indefatigable reading and picking of brains; second, the great gaping holes this had left in his considerable body of knowledge. Both appeared far more drastic than he had heretofore known; he knew ever so much more than he knew he knew, and he had between five and seven times as much misinformation and ignorance than he had ever dreamed.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As Adam said when his wife fell out of the tree—Eve’s dropping again.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now how can you like a man without wanting him?” she demands of herself aloud. There is no answer. It is an article of faith with her. If you like a man, it has to be because you want him. Whoever heard of it any other way?”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is it men’s disgust of women that makes so many of them treat women with such contempt? Is it that which makes it so easy to point out that the Don Juans and the Lotharios, for all their hunger for women, are often merely trying to see how many women they can punish?”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pig among people is a pig, he tells himself, but a pig among pigs is people.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You cannot be objective about this because you have been indoctrinated, sermonized, drenched, imbued, inculcated and policed on the matter since first you wore blue booties. You come from a time and place in which the maleness of the male, and the femaleness of the female, and the importance of their difference, were matters of almost total preoccupation.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So it is easily seen that the sexual insignes are nothing in themselves, for any of them, in another time and place, might belong to both sexes, the other sex, or neither. In other words, a skirt does not make the social entity, woman. It takes a skirt plus a social attitude to do it. But all through history, in virtually every culture and country, there has indeed been a “woman’s province” and a “man’s province,” and in most cases the differences between them have been exploited to fantastic, sometimes sickening extremes. Why?”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are only three ways of dealing with sex. It may be gratified; it may be repressed; or it may be sublimated. The latter is, through history, often an ideal and frequently a success, but it is always an instability.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It means "Ask the next question." Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It's the symbol of everything humanity has ever created, and is the reason it has been created. This guy is sitting in a cave and he says, "Why can't man fly?" Well, that's the question. The answer may not help him, but the question now has been asked. The next question is what? How? And so all through the ages, people have been trying to find out the answer to that question. We've found the answer, and we do fly. This is true of every accomplishment, whether it's technology or literature, poetry, political systems or anything else. That is it. Ask the next question. And the one after that.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: His explanation of the meaning of a small symbol he used when writing his signature, as quoted in an interview with David Duncan (with an image of his signature), sometime around 1980.
“There were a lot of people living in his time who never did latch on to the idea that the curve of technological progress was not a flat slanting line like a diving board, but a geometrical curve like a ski-jump. These wistful and mixed-up souls were always suffering from attacks of belated conservatism, clutching suddenly at this dying thing and that, trying to keep it or bring it back. It wasn’t real conservatism at all, of course, but an unthought longing for the dear old days when one could predict what would be there tomorrow, if not next week. Unable to get the big picture, they welcomed the conveniences, the miniaturization of this and the speed of that, and then were angrily confused when their support of these things changed their world.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mankind has in it a crushing need to feel superior. This doesn’t have to bother the very small minority who actually are superior, but it sure troubles the controlling majority who are not. If you can’t be really good at anything, then the only way to be able to prove you are superior is to make someone else inferior. It is this rampaging need in humanity which has, since pre-history, driven a man to stand on the neck of his neighbor, a nation to enslave another, a race to tread on a race. But it is also what men have done to women. Did they actually find them inferior to begin with, and learn from that to try to feel superior to other things outside—other races, religions, nationalities, occupations? Or was it the other way around: did men make women inferior for the same reason they tried to dominate the outsider? Which is cause, which effect?”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is in mankind a deep and desperate necessity to feel superior. In any group there are some who genuinely are superior...but it is easy to see that within the parameters of any group, be it culture, club, nation, profession, only a few are really superior; the mass, clearly, are not. But it is the will of the mass that dictates the mores, initiated though changes may be by individuals or minorities; the individuals or minorities, more often than not, are cut down for their trouble. And if a unit of the mass wants to feel superior, it will find a way. This terrible drive has found expression in many ways, through history—in slavery and genocide, xenophobia and snobbery, race prejudice and sex differentiation. Given a man who, among his fellows, has no real superiority, you are faced with a bedevilled madman who, if superiority is denied him, and he cannot learn one or earn one, will turn on something weaker than himself and make it inferior. The obvious, logical, handiest subject for this inexcusable indignity is his woman. He could not do this to anyone he loved.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pleasure, the outer edge of ecstasy, was in the dour days of Protestantism, considered sinful in itself, wherever gained; Rome held specifically that any or all sexual pleasure was sinful. And for all this capped volcano produced in terms of bridges and houses, factories and bombs, it gouted from its riven sides a frightful harvest of neurosis. And even where a nation officially discarded the church, the same repressive techniques remained, the same preoccupation with doctrine, filtered through the same mesh of guilt. So sex and religion, the real meaning of human existence, ceased to be meaning and became means; the unbridgeable hostility between the final combatants was the proof of the identity of their aim—the total domination, for the ultimate satisfaction of the will to superiority, of all human minds.”
Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) said by 1985 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source