To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Riverworld, #1)

by Philip José Farmer

Where all are nude, none are nude.

‘I’m so timorous and queasy because I am afraid of the anger, the desire to do violence, that lies not too deeply within me. I fear violence because I am violent. I fear what will happen if I am not afraid. Hell, I’ve known that for forty years. Much good the knowledge has done me!’

‘If he hadn’t exploited the poor, someone else would have done so.’

She was the product of her society – like all women, she was what men had made her – and she had strength of character and flexibility of mind to lift herself above some of the prejudices of her time and her class.

‘In this type of slavery, there’s no chance for a slave to gain his freedom. Nor is there any personal feeling, except hatred, between slave and owner. In the Orient, the situation was different. Of course, like any human institution, it had its abuses.’

Göring, after sucking on his pipe, continued, ‘Der Fuehrer was a great man, but he had some idiocies. One of them was his attitude toward Jews. Myself, I cared less. But the Germany of my time was anti-Jewish, and a man must go with the Zeitgeist if he wants to get any place in life. Enough of that. Even here, a man cannot get away from them.’

Every man of importance expects to be reviled and misunderstood by the brainless masses.

No, all must be given a second chance, no matter, how bestial or selfish or petty or stupid.