Edmund Cooper Quotes

“What is god but an extension of the ego - a sort of megalomania by proxy?”

“In some way the material universe appears to be passing away like a tale that is told, dissolving into nothingness like a vision.”

“For death is only a loss of radiance, and birth is only the beginning of a separate journey.”

“The journey is what matters.”

“How does one objectively define madness?”

“There is no other god but life. Life is the only holy thing. And when that goes that is the death of God.”

“All living things sustain each other. All living things depend upon death not as an end, an absolute completion, but as a beginning of a new rhythm, a way of fulfillment in passing on the restless force of life.”

“Those who look for death have to wait patiently till death finds those who look.”

“It is the nature of men to act negatively but to dream and hope positively.”

“Men who are afraid live longer.”

“Cultures and societies consumed each other, as well as animals and men.”

“Behind the apparent unreason there is reason.”

“Self-pity, a destroyer of perspective.”

“Destiny knows no favorites.”

“It is an inflexible law that all living things must seek to dominate their environment.”

“It is not in the nature of man to accept permanent failure.”

“Historically, the developement of machines had amplified man's ability to destroy.”

“The real struggle is between order and anarchy.”

“Only ideals are dangerous.”

“He who expects little is rarely disappointed.”

“But it is better to be destroyed on strange frontiers than to live in a prison of ignorance and fear.”

“Life itself has become ludicrous.”

“When one flowers dies, another is born.”

“There is no truth but untruth. There is no reason but unreason.”

“For mankind may survive and live without machines, and still be civilised. But without compassion, the human race can only elaborate upon the futile cunning and the barren intelligence of the great apes.”

“On earth there are frontiers, in the sky there are none.”

“But in adversity, intelligence alone cannot sustain hope. Ultimately, hope can be sustained only by finding purpose in adversity, by imposing a pattern on the fortuitous disasters of existence. Human beings, if force to it, will compromise their intelligence to preserve their hope.”

“All fanaticism springs from the religious impulse.”

“Mankind has never been renowned for accepting logical solutions to its most serious problems. As a rule, the degre of logicality of solutions seemed to vary inversely with the urgency or seriousness of the problems.”

“Perhaps justified violence is better than peace at any price.”

“In a fantastic world, the fantastic had become merely ordinary.”

“Only the absurd could have any bearing on reality.”

“But then history was made by fools.”

“And yet to be without hope is almost to be without sanity.”

“I believe our only hope of immortality lies in our actions, in what we do to and for others, and in our children.”

“And he who loves last loves loudest.”

“The colour of the skin is less important than the spirit wich moves it.”

“But some children have clearer vision than adults.”

“There is only the eternal serial moment of now. It contains the total pattern, the complete history.”

“To be with child does not diminish beauty, but changes the shape of beauty.”

“Without mankind machines are nothing.”

“Thus, ultimately, there never could be an absolute end; just as there never could have been an absolute beginning. There could only be a continuous unfolding.”

“But it may be that there is happiness in the very things we rejected - in work and responsibility. In the rearing of children and in the challenge of permanent love.”

“There is no acceptable true image.”

“But no one can be immune to the laws of chance.”

“In the country of the mad, the sane man is crazy.”

“Courage has many faces.”