A Canticle for Leibowitz (St. Leibowitz, #1)

by Walter M. Miller Jr.

‘Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.’

‘And how will this come to pass?’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world.’

If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it.’

But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall?

Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it’s not decades away; it’s right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.

‘You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.’