Classic Science Fiction Quotes

“He fought because it was considered the 'thing to do,' because he liked the people he had to live with, and because those people wouldn't have a good opinion of him if he didn't fight. People never needed much of a philosophic motive to make them do the socially approved things.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., Classic Science Fiction

“The seventh John Smith had even conspired to have a conspiracy against himself in Argentina, with resulting civil war, so that the weapons could be tested under actual battle conditions--for the region had been overpopulated anyway.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., Classic Science Fiction

“He soon decided that almost any fact could be accepted calmly after it had already happened. Men would be just as calm after their cities had been reduced to rubble. The human capacity for calmness was almost unlimited, ex post facto, because the routine of daily living had to go on, despite the big business of governments whose leaders invoked the Deity in the cause of slaughter.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., Classic Science Fiction

“Could a man decide, 'I am right, and everyone else is wrong?'

No evidence of a malfunction, he thought. I am not a coward. Neither am I insane.

His heart cried, 'I am disgusted with this purposeless war. I shall quit fighting it.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., Classic Science Fiction