The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK® Quotes

“A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“Always it had been the same; leaders arose holding before men the illusion of vast, glorious promises while they carefully led them into hells of lost dreams and broken promises.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“when Big Science and politics tangle, science always loses,”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“I think when more men get out among the stars, people are going to realize that we can’t afford to think of ourselves as anything other than citizens of Mother Earth. In the face of the universe, of Moonmen, of the inhabitants of the millions of other planets that must exist, our national differences seem so small, so much a private family matter as not to be thrashed out in the public of our interstellar neighbors. I think it’s good we are brothers. All men are brothers.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“When you look at the world from here, from another planet, these distinctions of nationality seem so—somehow—unimportant. We are all humans, all from the same ancestors. Even if we were not brothers, we would feel ourselves such. Our roots go to all parts of the world. If you add up all people’s ancestors a hundred generations back, you will realize that there can’t be anyone who is not distantly related to everyone else—that we all share somebody in our ancestry who lived in every country of the world, shared all the histories of the past and all the different politics and opinions.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“Modern toys entertain them with a bag of tricks that leave the young ’uns no room for imagination. They couldn’t possibly think up, on their own, all the screwy things these new toys do.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“people who run must have something to run from, and half the time it’s not there and half the time, of course, it is; only you never know which is which”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“But disillusion is a healthy thing. It leads to reality.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“I’m resigned to living in a chess-type universe—few and simple rules, but infinite combinations of them.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“Reduce man to a single type and he is certain to succumb, sooner or later, to the inevitable disaster that his one type cannot cope with.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“You find yourself going by the book instead of by your head. You’re covered, if you go by the book—no matter what happens. And you might just as well be dead!”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“She was vanilla ice cream with meringue and maple syrup on”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“When men are to be led it is rarely wise to discuss policy or tactics with them. Most men work best when they know only what is expected of them. Then they can’t get confused and they do not get ideas of how to do things better.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“He’d said that same day to Fani that a practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a sacrifice for others’ welfare. He began to suspect, now, that the welfare of others can often coincide with one’s own.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“He’d said that same day to Fani that a practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a sacrifice for others’ welfare.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“This man was my equal—no, I admitted grudgingly, my superior—and I hated him for it. I hated him because I knew that in his dream of power no one must suffer. I hated him because, once, I had been weak enough to share his feelings.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“One thing was clear: his attempt at sincerity and clarity had been a total failure. The world was accustomed to subterfuge and verbal pyrotechnics, and when it didn’t get the expected commodity, it grew suspicious. Sincerity had no market value.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“Percy’s callous description of humanity as “seven billion morons” was uncomfortably close to the truth.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“But was Percy’s approach the only one? Did you have to lie to them, push them, treat them as seven billion morons?”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“Jonner’s name had become a legend of the days when there were giants in the Earth, mighty men whose thinking had gone beyond the concept of nations to envision one race, beyond the creeds of churches to see one faith, and beyond the dogma of economics to state that as long as one hungry man existed on the face of the earth, no man with a full dinner in front of him was free to eat his meal in peace and safety.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories

“The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.”
― Fritz Leiber, The 11th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 36 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories