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John Brunner Quotes
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John Kilian Houston Brunner was a British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1969 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel, and the BSFA award the same year. The Jagged Orbit won the BSFA award in 1970. Wikipedia  

✵ 24. September 1934 – 25. August 1995
John Brunner: 147 quotes1 like

John Brunner Quotes

“You and your ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl. You shat in it and boasted about the mess you’d made. And now it’s full and overflowing, and you’re fat and happy and black kids are going crazy to keep you rich. Goodbye!”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

February “DISGRACE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Well, like they say, nothing can set a precedent until it happens for the first time.”

John Brunner book Timescoop

Source: Timescoop (1969), Chapter 19 (p. 122)

“You’ve been competing against the past, and that’s a contest no one can win because the past has all the advantages. We’ve forgotten all its fiddling little drawbacks: the lice, the skin infections, the disgusting personal habits and the rest of it.”

John Brunner book Timescoop

Source: Timescoop (1969), Chapter 18 (p. 116)

“I don’t usually talk much about this, Chester, because my grandfather dinned it into me as a child that it doesn’t make any difference who you’re descended from unless you can do something yourself to match what your ancestors did to gain their own notoriety.”

John Brunner book Timescoop

Source: Timescoop (1969), Chapter 2 (p. 18)

“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?”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

“What’s the price of life?” Donald countered bitterly.
continuity (37) “Storage”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“The whole of modern so-called civilised existence is an attempt to deny reality insofar as it exists. When did Don last look at the stars, when did Norman last get soaked in a rainstorm? The stars as far as these people are concerned are the Manhattan-pattern!”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

He jerked his thumb at a window beyond which the city’s treasure-house of coloured light glimmered gaudily.
continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Rather painfully, we managed to digest Darwinian evolution so far as physical attributes were concerned within half a century of the initial controversy.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

I say “we,” but if you’re a Bible-thumping fundamentalist I expect you at this point to take the book by one corner at arm’s length and ceremonially consign it to the place where you put most sensible ideas, along with everything else you decline to acknowledge the existence of, such as mainly shit.
context (5) “The Grand Manor”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“What are you going to do for a career?”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

Diverted from his orbit, Donald binked. “Well, something which uses up a minimum of my time, I imagine. So I can use the rest to mortar up the gaps in my education.”
continuity (3) “After One Decade”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“We’ve been amazingly lucky, which is another way of saying we’ve kept our eyes and minds open and responded when something turned up.”

John Brunner book Total Eclipse

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 15 (p. 125)

“I simply can’t make myself believe that if they’d been handicapped by belief in capricious supernatural beings they’d have achieved what they did.”

John Brunner book Total Eclipse

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 14 (p. 116)

“There’s an old saying: The genius sees what happens, but the plodder sees what he expects to happen.”

John Brunner book Total Eclipse

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 10 (p. 88)

“How can a man be so brilliant and so obtuse?”

John Brunner book Total Eclipse

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 8 (p. 69)

“Damn it, man: anyone who can treat another human being as an object for target practice is stuck even further back in the infantile stage than somebody who’s frightened to move on from the masturbation phase and go to bed with a girl!”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 78 (p. 284)

“What’s happened to us that we take killings for granted among our children? Don’t give me that hogwash about students at college having to be treated as adults—there’s nothing adult about playing with guns and grenades!”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 78, “No, Of Course Logorrhea Isn’t What Happens When You Break a Log-Jam But the Result Is Pretty Much the Same for Anyone Who’s in the Way ” (p. 282)

“It was his hope and ambition to cause many deaths. He was an arms salesman by choice, calm and even a little happy to see his products in such demand, capable of trying to clinch a sale at the bedside of a fresh corpse.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 51, “If Your Number Comes Up Then Your Number Comes Up and That’s All There Is to It So What’s the Use of Worrying That’s What I Always Say” (p. 163)

“The sound of shutters going up around her mind, armored against anything short of a nuke, was very nearly audible in the room.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 47, “Plea of Insanity” (p. 146)

“Well-intentioned men don’t run for office any more! They have too much sense to expose themselves to assassination, and only delusible idiots like our current chief executive can be persuaded to don the robes of high office. Nice guys don’t crave power.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 46, “Why’s, After the Event” (p. 143)

“The sound of a code being broken is usually the same as that of somebody snapping his fingers.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 45 (p. 135; chapter title)

“Like all neo-puritans you have a mind like an open drain.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 44, “A Firm Decision to Go Into the Wagon-Fixing Business in a Big Way” (p. 132)

“It’s okay to be a responsible member of society if only you know what you’re going to be held responsible for.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 34 (p. 100; chapter title)

“If “media” is the plural of “medium” the question is: how many of them are fraudulent?”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 17 (p. 57; chapter title)

“It was a great image, especially for areas where there was strong Muslim influence and the concomitant view prevailed that women had no souls.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 15 (p. 49)

“It’s common platitude that knowledge is neutral but every now and then it would be useful if it were on your side rather than theirs.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 15 (p. 49; chapter title)

“What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don’t know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 6, “The Where It’s At and the Whyfore It Should Be There” (p. 26)

“Western culture is undergoing a process of transition from guilt-oriented, with a conscience, to shame-oriented, with a morbid fear of being found out.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 3, “Spoolpigeon” (p. 10)

“So what shape was the world in this morning? Even flatter than yesterday.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 3, “Spoolpigeon” (p. 9)