Jack Vance: Trending quotes

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Jack Vance: 426 quotes3 likes

“The travesty exists only because reliance upon abstraction has made reality incomprehensible to you.”

Jack Vance book The Gray Prince

Source: The Gray Prince (1975 [serialized 1974]), Chapter 16 (p. 159)

“How I hate you. If hate were stone I could build a tower into the clouds.”

Jack Vance book The Gray Prince

Source: The Gray Prince (1975 [serialized 1974]), Chapter 15 (p. 152)

“Urban folk, dealing as they do in ideas and abstractions, become conditioned to unreality. Then, wherever the fabric of civilization breaks, these people are as helpless as fish out of water.”

Jack Vance book The Gray Prince

Source: The Gray Prince (1975 [serialized 1974]), Chapter 4 (p. 49)

“You used the word ‘civilization,’ which means a set of abstractions, symbols, conventions. Experience tends to be vicarious; emotions are predigested and electrical; ideas become more real than things.”

Jack Vance book The Gray Prince

Source: The Gray Prince (1975 [serialized 1974]), Chapter 4 (p. 48)

“Often their grievances were real; often they complained from sheer petulance.”

Jack Vance book The Gray Prince

Source: The Gray Prince (1975 [serialized 1974]) Prologue (p. 8)

“My brain, otherwise a sound instrument, has a serious defect—a hypertrophied lobe of curiosity.”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Howling Bounders (p. 56)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

“Mystery is a word with no objective pertinence, merely describing the limitations of a mind. In fact, a mind may be classified by the order of the phenomena it considers mysterious.… The mystery is resolved, the solution made known. “Of course, it is obvious!” comes the chorus. A word about the obvious: it is always obvious.… The common mind transposed the sequence, letting the mystery generate the solution. This is logic in reverse; actually the mystery relates to the solution as the foam relates to the beer.…”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Unspeakable McInch (p. 39; all ellipses in the original)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

“I’d rather be a live pessimist than a dead comedian.”

Source: Short fiction, Future Tense (1964), Sail 25 (p. 93)

“Now, as to the persistence of superstition, only an impoverished mind considers itself the repository of absolute knowledge.”

Source: Short fiction, Future Tense (1964), Sail 25 (p. 84)

“Organization: smooth and relentless; Organization: massive and inert, tolerant of the submissive, serenely cruel to the unbeliever…”

Source: Short fiction, Future Tense (1964), Dodkin’s Job (p. 15)

“Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding?”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Sub-Standard Sardines (p. 132)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

“Here’s some miscellaneous information. First, wear what you like. Personally I dislike uniforms. I never have worn a uniform. Secondly, if you have a religion, keep it to yourself. I dislike religions. I have always disliked religions. In response to the thought passing through each of your skulls, I do not think of myself as God. But you may do so, if you choose.”

Sail 25 (p. 75)
Short fiction, Future Tense (1964)

“When self-willed microunits combine to form and sustain a durable macrounit, certain freedoms of action are curtailed.
This is the basic process of Organization.
The more numerous and erratic the microunits, the more complex must be the structure and function of the macrounit—hence the more pervasive and restricting the details of Organization.”

Dodkin’s Job (p. 7)
Short fiction, Future Tense (1964)