John Brunner: Trending quotes

John Brunner trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
John Brunner: 294   quotes 1   like

“Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (9) "Guncrit"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

People , History , Learning

“If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (12) "The Sociological Counterpart of Cheyne-Stokes Respiration" <!-- [Italics in source] -->
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: If you want to know what's shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism. It is an almost infallible sign — a kind of death-rattle — when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them.

“When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (16) "Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere: Calypso (stanzas 2, 5, and 7) <!-- [Italics in source] -->
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: Watching their sets in a kind of trance
were people in Mexico, people in France.
They don't chase Jones but the dreams are the same —
Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, that's the right name!
Herr und Frau Uberall or les Partout,
A gadget on the set makes them look like you. When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.
It may be a rumor or it may be true
But a gadget on the set has it said by you! "What do you think about Yatakang?"
"I think the same as the Everywhere gang."
"What do you think of Beninia then?"
"The Everywheres will tell me but I don't know when."
Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same.

Thinking

“Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (16) "Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere: Calypso (stanzas 2, 5, and 7) <!-- [Italics in source] -->
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
Context: Watching their sets in a kind of trance
were people in Mexico, people in France.
They don't chase Jones but the dreams are the same —
Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, that's the right name!
Herr und Frau Uberall or les Partout,
A gadget on the set makes them look like you. When the Everywhere couple crack a joke
It's laughed at by all right-thinking folk.
When the Everywhere couple adopt a pose
It's the with-it view as everyone knows.
It may be a rumor or it may be true
But a gadget on the set has it said by you! "What do you think about Yatakang?"
"I think the same as the Everywhere gang."
"What do you think of Beninia then?"
"The Everywheres will tell me but I don't know when."
Whatever my country and whatever my name
A gadget on the set makes me think the same.

Thinking , Country

“First you use machines, then you wear machines, and then …? Then you serve machines.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (14) "The Right Man For The Job"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, " This is new, and therefore better.”

John Brunner The Shockwave Rider

Source: The Shockwave Rider

Fools

“I'm myself, not a label.”

John Brunner The Shockwave Rider

Source: The Shockwave Rider

“If you so much as touch him, I’ll have to smash every bone in your body—twice, to make sure I didn’t miss any the first time. I don’t recommend the experience.”

John Brunner

Section 5 (p. 127)
Short fiction, You’ll Take the High Road (1973)

Time

“Most of the drivers, however, had the sense to stay put, fuming behind their blank windshields as they calculated the cost of repairs and repainting. Practically all of them were armed, but not one was stupid enough to pull a gun. It had been tried during a Trainite demonstration in San Francisco last month. A girl had been shot dead. Others, anonymous in whole-head masks and drab mock-homespun clothing, had dragged the killer from his car and used the same violent acid they applied to glass to write MURDERER on his flesh.
In any case, there was little future in rolling down a window to curse the demonstrators. Throats didn’t last long in the raw air.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “A ROOST FOR CHICKENS”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Stupidity , Cars , Girl , Sense

“I don’t hate her personally, though if she were enough of a person to be worth such a strong emotion I think I easily could. What I hate is what she represents: the willingness of human beings to be reduced to a slick visual package, like a new television set—up-to-the-minute casing, same old works.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

the happening world (8) “Be Kind To Your Forfeited Friends”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Hate , Thinking , Strong , Personality

“The man had declared, with some justification, that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and then gone on to claim that the only solution lay in returning to the Good Old Moral Values of the glorious past.
Unable to stand any more, Malcolm had demanded why, if those values were so marvellous, the people who paid lip-service to them had involved mankind in two world wars with all their accoutrements from poison gas to atom-bombs.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 4 (p. 31)

War , People , World , Hell

“Until last year, although this town was barely fifty miles from Denver, the road had been bad and only a handful of visitors had chanced on it. The increasing tendency for people to take mountain vacations, however, since the sea had become too filthy to be tolerable, could not be ignored. The road now was excellent and the area had exploded.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “SNOW JOB”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

People , Mountain , Chance , Sea

“SCANALYZER is the one single, the ONLY study of the news in depth that’s processed by General Technics’ famed computer Shalmaneser, who sees all, hears all, knows all save only that which YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere, wish to keep to yourselves.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (1) “Scanalyze My Name“
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Study

“Opening the door to the visiting doctor, all set to apologize for the flour on her hands—she had been baking—Mrs. Byrne sniffed. Smoke! And if she could smell it with her heavy head cold, it must be a tremendous fire!
”We ought to call the brigade!” she exclaimed. “Is it a hayrick?”
”The brigade would have a long way to go,” the doctor told her curtly. “It’s from America. The wind’s blowing that way.””

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

November “THE SMOKE OF THAT GREAT BURNING”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Way

“Behind her chair, from a wall covered in a very expensive velvet-flock paper, a portrait of her grandfather looked down. He had been an Episcopalian bishop, but the picture showed him in the costume of a New England gentleman keeping up the Old English custom of riding to hounds: red coat, brown boots, distinguished with a white dog-collar and black silk front.
Hugh referred to him as being dressed to kill.
The salad was replaced—though Hugh had sampled only a mouthful of his—by a dish of cold fish with mayonnaise. He didn’t even touch this course. He was suddenly afraid of it because it had come from the sea.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

February “DISGRACE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Dogs , Fish , Sea

“The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread.
::: — John Milton: "Lycidas"”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

Next year
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Drawing

“In an individual one would regard it as evidence of insanity to see someone repeatedly undertaking enterprises that resulted in his losing precisely what he claimed he was trying to achieve; it is not less lunatic to do it on the international scale, but if you’ve been catching the news lately you’ll have noticed it’s being done more than ever.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (11) “Come Outside and Say That”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

““It would have been a longer and slower job, I’m sure, and probably there would have been a high price to pay. But what is the price of freedom?”
“What’s the price of life?” Donald countered bitterly.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (37) “Storage”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Life , Freedom

“Isn’t it typical? We train one man—one ordinary, inoffensive, retiring little man—to be an efficient killing machine and he kills the one person who stood a chance of saving us from ourselves!”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (42) “And Say Which Seed Will Grow“
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Chance , Personality , Training