Eight Keys to Eden Quotes

“But there were those photographs, and the world was full of Mrs. Grundy. He might have to back up a little bit on the incompetence of the Junior E, but Mrs. Grundy would be behind him a hundred per cent on the morals issue—when he released some of the photographs, and titillated her nasty imagination by reference to others too indecent to release.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“As far back as man's history goes the growth of police powers immediately preceded and caused the fall and destruction of each culture.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“was an old police, prosecution, and political trick to separate a few items from the total context, but still a good one; for the public never bothered to know the whole context of anything. An old trick to fasten on phrases and slogans to fix an attitude in the public mind, for a phrase or slogan was about all the public was able to master. Anyone who had ever served on a jury, observed its deliberations, knew that out of all the welter of evidence, only certain isolated statements or facts, often minor and insignificant, penetrated the juror's mind, and around these bits he formed his conclusions. Any smart lawyer knew that, and tried to set up his case accordingly.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“They knew it was a centuries-old tactic to wait for the right situation to arise, so that the lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some law which seemed only to apply to this given condition but in actuality broadened police powers over a wide area of man's actions.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“They knew that the police worked unremittingly, unceasingly, always and ever to bring every phase of human activity under their control.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“those folks might differ in some opinions, but humans always stood ready to help one another in distress, differences forgotten.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science if you do.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“No one thought it curious they weren't trying to get the information from source for everyone in journalism understands the importance lies in what the competition is going to say, not in what happened.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“It was always difficult to maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in such a position.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“first-hand observation might limit his capacity for rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by the bias of his commentator or columnist.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“If it did turn out this way, they'd have been on top of the news; and if it didn't, well, who remembers yesterday's headlines in the press of today's new hate and panic.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a summer shower, that might be magnified into a flood. EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally to COLONY WIPED OUT. That there was no proof of loss or destruction bothered no one in journalism.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“In such a dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a summer shower, that might be magnified into a flood. EDEN SILENT quickly became COLONY FEARED LOST and progressed normally to COLONY WIPED OUT.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“no real or imagined scandals seemed of such journalistic stature as to work the public into a frenzy of intolerance for one another's aberrations.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden

“Since the publisher paid the salary; since rewrite men, like television writers, maintained their own feeling of superiority to the mass by writing down to the level of a not very bright twelve-year-old; since the facts had to be trimmed and altered to fit the open space or time slot; even these reporters had a difficult time of maintaining the usual odds—that there is only a twenty-to-one chance that anything said in the newspapers or on the air may be accurate.”
― Mark Clifton, Eight keys to Eden