Gene Wolfe: Believer

Gene Wolfe was American science fiction and fantasy writer. Explore interesting quotes on believer.
Gene Wolfe: 204   quotes 4   likes

“Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.”

Gene Wolfe

Source: Shadow & Claw

People , Strong

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”

Gene Wolfe

Source: Shadow & Claw

Truth

“There's a certain kind of lonely man who rejects love, because he believes that anyone who offers it wouldn't be a lover worth having.”

Gene Wolfe book There Are Doors

Source: There Are Doors

Love , Lovers

“Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.”

Gene Wolfe book The Urth of the New Sun

Source: The Urth of the New Sun

Imagination , Learning

“The slight criticism of evolution I offer should not be taken as evidence that I do not believe in evolution; I do. Let's not blame God for everything. I also believe in Lamarckism, as it was put forward by Lamarck. (The Lamarckism presented in standard textbooks is actually Lysenkoism, a straw man set up by the opponents of Lamarckism, palpably false and easily disproved.) There is no paradox in that: Lamarckism and Darwinism are not mutually exclusive, except politically.”

Gene Wolfe

"Sun of Helioscope", in Castle of the Otter (1982), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

God , Falseness

“Whenever a man and a woman come to words or blows, fools are quick to attribute it to the differences between the sexes. The sexes differ much less than they wish to believe, and such differences as are real tend less to promote strife than to prevent it.”

Gene Wolfe

Volume 2, Ch. 23
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)

Fools , Sex

“We may be damned at last, by God or our consciences; and though I've met a good many people who profess to credit no God, I've never met one who believed he had no conscience—this though he could no more produce it for my inspection than I could point out the God he demanded to see.”

Gene Wolfe

Introduction for R. A. Lafferty, Episodes of the Argo (1990), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

God , People

“This, then, is the new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read but don't. […] This new illiteracy is more pernicious than the old, because unlike the old illiteracy it does not debar its victims from power and influence, although like the old illiteracy it disqualifies them for it. Those long-dead men and women who learned to read so that they might read the Bible and John Bunyan would tell us that pride is the greatest of all sins, the father of sin. And the victims of the new illiteracy are proud of it. If you don't believe me, talk to them and see with what pride they trumpet their utter ignorance of any book you care to name.”

Gene Wolfe

"From a house on the Borderland", Horrorstruck (1987), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Women , Men , Books , Learning

“Animals in zoos (we are told) believe that their bars protect them. We Americans have forged our own bars, built our own cage, and live in it more or less content as long as someone feeds us.”

Gene Wolfe

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "Petting Zoo", p. 432
Nonfiction

Animals

“Every so often I get optimistic and explain the best method of learning to write for students. I don't believe any of them has ever tried it.”

Gene Wolfe

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009), afterword to "The Boy Who Hooked the Sun", p. 381
Nonfiction

Learning

“Just as mainstream literature shows us how our contemporaries view the present, and historical fiction shows us how they view the past (not, of course, what the present or the past were actually like), so speculative fiction shows us how they view the future. I happen to believe that my contemporaries' view of the past is not very important; but their view of the present is quite definitely important, and their view of the future is vital.”

Gene Wolfe

"The Right of Things to Come", presentation for the Science Fiction Research Association (1978), as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction

Literature , Past , Future