Brian W. Aldiss Quotes page 2

“As long as the chromosome reproduced itself in sufficient dominance, he was immortal! To him, in an unscientific age, the problem did not present itself quite like that; but he realized that there was a trait to be kept in the family.”

“Man in His Time” p. 209
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Why don’t you go somewhere quietly and consult your history books if you have no consciences to consult?”

Let's Be Frank (1957)

“Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to overconsume.”

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 122
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Let’s have a toast—to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or assholes they have!”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 (p. 121)

“Men left their strange hobbies on Earth and Venus and projected themselves into the pattern. Their entire personalities were merged with the texture of space itself. Through science, they reached immortality.
It was a one-way passage.
They did not return. Each Involute carried thousands or even millions of people. There they were, not dead, not living. How they exulted or wept in their transubstantiation, no one left could say. Only this could be said: man had gone, and a great emptiness was fallen over Earth.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 (p. 112)

“I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.”

“Old Hundredth” p. 162
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction — it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.”

The Twinkling of an Eye: My Life as an Englishman (1998) Unsourced variant: "Why had I become a writer in the first place? Because I wasn't fit for society; I didn't fit into the system."

“Frank II had been back in the aptly named Mother Country for only a few months when a lady of his acquaintance presented him with Frank IV. Frank IV was a girl, christened Berenice. The state of coma which had ensnared Frank II for so long did not afflict Berenice, or any other of his descendants.
Another tremendous adjustment in the shared consciousness had to be made. That also had its compensations; Frank was the first man ever really to appreciate the woman's point of view.”

"In Conversation: Brian Aldiss & James Blish" in Cypher (October 1973); republished in The Tale That Wags the God (1987) by James Blish

“The ability to change should not be despised.”

Let's Be Frank (1957)

“What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?”

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 139
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“He had the settled expression of a certain kind of peasant—the kind that accepts, with protest but without malice, the vagaries of life. It is the gift life sends to compensate for the lack of a high I. Q.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 “Washington” (p. 110)

“It’s the duty of men in office not to be misled.”

“Man on Bridge” pp. 90-91
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“I kill from conviction, not to pass a personality quiz.”

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 140
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.”

“Basis for Negotiations” p. 143
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Sounds to me as if you want journalists,” Timberlane said.
“No, sir, we require steady men with integrity. This is not a scoop, it’s a way of life.”

"Apéritif" in Bury My Heart at W.H. Smith's (1990)

“All over the world there must be far-reaching changes in animal behavior and habitat; if only one could have another life in which to chart it all…. Ah, well, that’s not a fruitful thing to wish, is it?”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 4 (p. 115)

“If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn’t be where we are now.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 5 “The River: Oxford” (p. 147)

“Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 7 “The River: The End” (p. 190)

“If we can see our difficulties, there is a way of resolving them, or the hope of a way.”

Barefoot in the Head (1969)

“Insane? To disobey a law of the universe was impossible, not insane.”

The Glass Forest (1986)

“Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed — now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down…”

“Man in His Time” p. 201 (originally published in Science Fantasy, April 1965)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“They came, by what means he did not know, from outside, the vast abstraction that none of them had ever seen. He had a mental picture of a starry void in which men and monsters swam or battled, and then swiftly erased it. Such ideas did not conform with the quiet behavior of his companions; if they never spoke about outside, did they think about it?”

As quoted in web article "The Brian Aldiss Connection" http://www.zone-sf.com/brianaldiss.html, The Zone

“Did the others here feel the disquiet he felt? Had they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question:
Where was "here"?
He shut that one down sharply.
Deal with one thing at a time. Grope your way gently to the abyss. Categorize your knowledge.”

Outside (1955)

“You know that if you had been in charge of creation you would have found some medium less heart-breaking than Time to stage it in.”

Outside (1955)

“I'm lucky that SFWA has such a short memory. I was always the Young Turk, the gadfly. Part of the New Wave, although I didn't fit in there either! I spent years, and two histories, putting the so-called Old Guard in their place, and now I'm one of them!”

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 79
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“The shuffle only demonstrated people’s fatuous belief in a political cure for a human condition.”

Locus interview (2000)

“Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness — but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 6 “London” (p. 170)

“All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness—or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know.
Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.”

Let's Be Frank (1957)

“Many Franks of the sixteenth generation were killed in the muck of the trenches, he died not once but many times, developing an obsessive dread of war which never left him.
By the time the Americans entered the war, he was turning his many thoughts to politics.”

“A Kind of Artistry” p. 185
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“All of which pointed to a moral that they should have learned long before, Arthur thought: Never trust a bunch of lousy politicians to do your thinking for you.”

Let's Be Frank (1957)

“One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 6 (p. 171)

“A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank — though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it — not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament — but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought … all the infinite number of secret "how to's" that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level.
A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness.”

Report On Probability A (1968)

“To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.”

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Brian W. Aldiss book Hothouse

Source: Hothouse (1962), Chapter 5

“There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when it looked as if the intellect might win over the body, and our species become something worthwhile. But too much procreation killed that illusion.”

“Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he did not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed.… Somewhere that wasn't the house.…”

“Man on Bridge” p. 92
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

““The intelligent have been overwhelmed by the dull. Is that not an invasion?”
“More, I would say, of a self-betrayal.””

Outside (1955)

““Are you a religious man, Joe?”
Flitch pulled a face. “I leaves that sort of thing to women.””

“Man on Bridge” p. 83 (originally published in New Writings in SF 1, 1964)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“As Flitch dryly remarked when Greybeard commented on the graveyard, “Ah, they keep a-planting of ’em, but there ain’t any more of ’em growing up.””

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 149)

“There has always been a belief in miracles in the popular mind. As L. Sprague de Camp once said, the public would rather be bunked than debunked.”

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 5 (p. 148)

“All of which makes one feel that the centuries of science upon which our western culture is based have travelled unmarked through the popular mind. A surprising number of people are willing to junk the entire accumulation of knowledge since Ancient Greece after watching Uri Geller perform for five minutes on their twenty-three inch screen.”

Science Fiction on the Titanic, in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds.) The Year's Best SF 9 (1976), ISBN 0-8600-7894-9, p. 205

“Aldiss’s second law of thermo-linguistics states that what is most popular is rarely best and that what is best is rarely most popular.”

Science Fiction on the Titanic, in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds.) The Year's Best SF 9 (1976), ISBN 0-8600-7894-9, p. 203

“The greatest human achievement is to fulfil one’s destiny.”

Science Fiction on the Titanic, in Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison (eds.) The Year's Best SF 9 (1976), ISBN 0-8600-7894-9, p. 201

“There's a way outside. We're — we've got to find out what we are.”

Originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction, August 1965; reprinted in Michael Moorcock (ed.) Best SF Stories from New Worlds 4, p. 83
Short fiction, The Source (1965)