Philip Jose Farmer
As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth.Collection: Ignorance
The brain, knowing that a person can't live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible. In other words, religion is the earliest form of science fiction.Collection: Knowing
Everybody should fear only one person, and that person should be himself .Collection: Should
Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.Collection: Imagination
It was a shameful thing that she had nothing of which to be ashamed.Collection: Ashamed
Tomorrow changes the face of reality.Collection: Reality
It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.Collection: Attitude
The stars above will be below when man has Love.Collection: Life
This story is about love, which means that it is also about hate.Collection: Hate
Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.Collection: Strange
Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers.Collection: Character
There are Universes begging for Gods, yet he hangs around this one looking for work.Collection: Superstitions
Dullard: Someone who looks up a thing in the encyclopedia, turns directly to the entry, reads it, and then closes the book.Collection: Book
All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter.Collection: Afterlife
Nature is an experimenter.Collection: Nature
It's a peculiarity of the Norwegian culture and of the English and American, too, that men are not supposed to cry. Stiff upper lip and all that. But the Vikings cried like women in public or privately. They soaked their beards with tears and were not one bit ashamed about it. Yet, they were as quick to draw their swords as they were to shed tears. So, what's all this crap about men having to hold in their sorrow and grief and disappointment?Collection: Disappointment
Burton did not believe in miracles . Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles if you knew all the facts .Collection: Believe
Human beings are part of nature. Anything they do is natural. It's impossible for anything in nature to do anything unnatural.Collection: Art
The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be 'future fairy tales'. And even this is objectionable, since many science fiction stories take place in the present or the past, far and near.Collection: Writing
Beauty in this Iron Age must turn, From fluid living rainbow shapes to torn, And sootened fragments, ashes in an urn, On whose gray surface runes are traced by a Norn, Who hopes to wake the Future to arise, In Phoenix-fashion, and to shine with rays, To blast the sight of modern men whose dyes, Of selfishness and lust have stained our days...Collection: Fashion
Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive.Collection: Strong
Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man's faith , and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half.Collection: Men
Give us power, give us light To holdall love within our breast's small space.Collection: Life
Let those who think the soul is shallow rail, They must be warned before they dare to leap They'll plunge into the twilight depths where sweep In ceaseless thirst great teeth too swift to fail.Collection: Twilight
Now we have lit a candle to the power Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light Itself.Collection: Light
By this he meant that all events, therefore, all men, are interconnected in an unbreakable web. What man does, no matter how seemingly insignificant, vibrates through the strands and affects every man.Collection: Men
Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." Another fairy tale to give men hope . The old religions have been discredited although some refuse to face even that fact so new ones must be invented.Collection: Men
Caught Beauty , held to light, now apes A good, now evil, thing the shifting sign And spectrum of archaic, psychic shapes.Collection: Light
Can imagination act Perpendicular to fact? Can it be a kite that flies Till the Earth , umbrella-wise, Folds and drops away from sight?Collection: Wise
Sawbeaked epitome of bodiless Idea, tossed by gusts of ether, dive Through abstract mists and raid the sea of fact Eat rich strange fish, grow long bright feathers, press Form's flesh around thought's rib, and so derive From the act of beauty, beauty of the act.Collection: Sea
Call me Meier," Goring said, but he did not pause to explain the joke .Collection: Said
By now you must have accepted the fact that your religion , in fact, none of the Earthly religions, truly knew what the afterlife would be. All made guesses, and then established these as articles of faith . Though, in a sense, some were near the mark, if you accept their revelations as symbolic .Collection: Afterlife
Dreams haunted The Riverworld.Collection: Dream
Confucius once said that a bear could not fart at the North Pole without causing a big wind in Chicago.Collection: Science
Miles above the Earth we know , Fancy's rocket roars. Below, Here and Now are needles which Sew a pattern black as pitch, Waiting for the rocket's light.Collection: Light
Reader, pray that soon this Iron Age Will crumble, and Beauty escape the rusting cage.Collection: Iron