Robert Sheckley Quotes

“Remember, similitude need not imply exactitude.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 31)

“Joenes’s students quickly absorbed the material given to them, passed their tests, and quickly forgot the material. Like many vital young organisms, they were able to eject anything harmful, disturbing, distressing, or merely boring. Of course they also ejected anything useful, stimulating, or thought provoking. This was perhaps regrettable, but it was part of the educative process to which every teacher had to accustom himself.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 24 (p. 159)

“Reilly was fairly sure he’d survive after death; but he saw no reason to take chances. Also, Mr. Kean says that the very rich, like the very religious, wouldn’t enjoy a hereafter filled with just anybody. They think that, by suitable rites and symbols, they can get into a more exclusive part of the hereafter.”

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 8 “How Joenes Taught, and What He Learned” (p. 69)

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 20 (p. 91)

“They were shunned, and they had reacted to exclusion by exclusiveness.”

“I know you’re sane and you know you’re sane. But what if we’re both wrong?”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 12 (p. 56)

““I’m afraid not. According to the law, you must leave here at once.”
“But they’ll kill me!”
“That’s very true,” Frendlyer said. “Unfortunately, it can’t be helped. A victim, by definition, is one who is to be killed.”
“I thought this was a protective organization.”
“It is. But we protect rights, not victims. Your rights are not being violated.“”

Death of the Dreammaster (published in Martin H. Greenberg (ed.) The Further Adventures of Batman (1989), p. 24
Short fiction

“A little prescience goes a long way, especially in a galaxy as disorganized as this one.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 3 (p. 19)

“Nature also gives rain and drought, heat and cold; and thoughtfully ensures that the rain rots man’s food, the drought parches it, the heat scalds man’s body, and the cold freezes his limbs.
These are only nature’s milder aspects, not to be compared to the wrathfulness of the sea, the frigid indifference of the mountains, the treachery of the swamp, the depravity of the desert, or the terror of the jungle. But I noticed that nature, in her hatred of mankind, provided that most of the earth’s surface be covered with sea, mountains, swamp, desert, and jungle.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 34)

“And a great longing overcame him, a desire to be finished with desire, to forego pleasure and pain, to quit the petty modes of achievement and failure, to have done with distractions, and get on with the business of life, which was death.”

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 6 “Joenes and the Three #505justice Truck Drivers” (pp. 44-45)

“Evil,” the priest said, after he had settled comfortably into Barrent’s best chair, “is that force within us which inspires men to acts of strength and endurance. The worship of Evil is essentially the worship of oneself, and therefore the only true worship. The self which one worships is the ideal social being; the man content in his niche in society, yet ready to grasp any opportunity for advancement; the man who meets death with dignity, who kills without the demeaning vice of pity. Evil is cruel, since it is a true reflection of the uncaring and insensate universe. Evil is eternal and unchanging, although it comes to us in the many forms of protean life.”

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 17 (p. 83)

“He shook his head violently, pulled himself together and swallowed a stiff dose of Infradex, a drug designed to alleviate drug reactions. Within seconds he was his old, normally depressed self. This cheered him considerably, and he left the hut in a mood teetering on the edge of equanimity.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 6 (pp. 28-29)

“On Omega, the law is supreme. Hidden and revealed, sacred and profane, the law governs the actions of all citizens, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high. Without the law, there could be no privileges for those who made the law; therefore the law was absolutely necessary. Without the law and its stern enforcement, Omega would be an unthinkable chaos in which a man’s rights could extend only as far and as long as he personally could enforce them. This anarchy would mean the end of Omegan society; and particularly, it would mean the end of those senior citizens of the ruling class who had grown high in status, but whose skill with a gun had long passed its peak.
Therefore the law was necessary.
But Omega was also a criminal society, composed entirely of individuals who had broken the laws of Earth. It was a society which, in the final analysis, stressed individual endeavor. It was a society in which the lawbreaker was king; a society in which crimes were not only condoned but were admired and even rewarded; a society in which deviation from the rules was judged solely on its degree of success.
And this resulted in the paradox of a criminal society with absolute laws which were meant to be broken.”

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 125)

“It was the college conservatives who had almost succeeded in electing John Smith to the Presidency of the United States during the last election. The fact that Smith had been dead for twenty years had not dampened their ardor; quite the contrary, many considered this the candidate’s best quality.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 11 (pp. 50-51)

“All of us live by the employment of countless untested assumptions, the truth or falsehood of which we can determine only through the hazard of our lives. Since most of us value our lives more than the truth, we leave such drastic tests for the fanatics.”

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 8 “How Joenes Taught, and What He Learned” (pp. 70-71)

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and I don’t like it much either.”

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 14 (p. 70)

“All his studies had been for extraterrestrial exploration. There was no place for him on Earth; and now he was barred from space.”

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 32 (p. 153)

““You might say that,” Flynn said, thus avoiding an outright lie, since anyone might say anything whether it was true or not.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 8 (p. 41)

“Love is a wonderful game which begins in fun and ends in marriage.”

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 8 (p. 44)

“Quite in vain did several lawyers point out to him that, if justice really existed, there would be no need for law and lawmakers, and thus one of mankind’s noblest conceptions would be obliterated, and an entire occupational group would be thrown out of work. For it is the essence of the law, they told him, that abuses and outrages should exist, since these discrepancies served as proof and validation of the necessity of law, and of justice itself.”

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 131)

“But Joenes then made a speech which was a beauty, and I cannot recall it word for word, but the idea was that laws are made by man and thus must partake of the evil nature of man, and that true morality lies in following the true dictates of the illuminated soul.
“A Commie, huh?””

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 6 (pp. 28-29)

“In a way it made no difference, since nothing is permanent except our illusions.”

said the lead cop.
Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 2 “Lum’s Meeting With Lety Barrera Joenes” (p. 18)

“Well, no sense crying over unspilt blood,” the Prize Clerk said. “If we took full account of our eventualities, we’d soon run out of eventualities for us to take full account of.”

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 33 (pp. 156-157)

“For love, as he knew it, was an aberration, a form of temporary insanity, a short-lived state of autosuggestion.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 3 (p. 23)

“Thus action serves as anodyne, whereas contemplation is revealed as the most direct form of involvement, and therefore much shunned by men.”

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 15 (p. 132)

““It is the principle of Business, which is more fundamental than the law of gravity. Wherever you go in the galaxy, you can find a food business, a housebuilding business, a war business, a peace business, a governing business, and so forth. And, of course, a God business, which is called ‘religion,’ and which is a particularly reprehensible line of endeavor. I could talk for a year on the perverse and nasty notions that the religions sell, but I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. But I’ll just mention one matter, which seems to underlie everything the religions preach, and which seems to me almost exquisitely perverse.”
“What’s that?” Carmody asked.
“It’s the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is free. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what do the religions do with this? They say, ‘Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.’ The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the face of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.”
“I think I see what you mean,” Carmody said.
“I’ve made it too complicated,” Maudsley said. “There’s a much simpler reason for avoiding religion.”
“What’s that?”
“Just consider its style—bombastic, hortatory, sickly-sweet, patronizing, artificial, inapropos, boring, filled with dreary images or peppy slogans—fit subject matter for senile old women and unweaned babies, but for no one else. I cannot believe that the God I met here would ever enter a church; he had too much taste and ferocity, too much anger and pride. I can’t believe it, and for me that ends the matter. Why should I go to a place that a God would not enter?””

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 24 (p. 112)

“We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 13 (pp. 88-89)

“The only thing to think over was Me, of course. And the real problem about Me was, What was I supposed to do? Was I meant to be nothing but God? I had tried the God business and found it too limited. It was a job for a simple-minded egomaniac. There had to be something else for me to do—something more meaningful, more expressive of my true self. I’m convinced of it! That is my problem, and that is the question I ask of you: What am I to do with myself?”

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 6 “Joenes and the Three Truck Drivers” (p. 50)

““Time devours our feeble mortality, leaving us with but the sour residue of memory.”
Marvin nodded. “Yet this ineffable and ungraspable quantity,” he replied, “this time which no man may possess, is in truth our only possession.””

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 7 (p. 53)

“For the question inevitably remains, is Polletti’s admission of fear a magnificent conquest of the unconquerable, or a mere admission of the inadmissable?”

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 24 (p. 110)

“Rome has an ambiance, puerile yet unmatchable. Rome hints at the possibility of becoming the main actor in the drama of one’s own life. (The hint is false, of course; but the stolid northern cities do not even possess the hint.)”

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 2 (p. 26)

““Do you have any papers for Will Barrent?”
“None,” the lawyer said. “His case is in different hands. I’m afraid it might not be completely processed until after the Games are over.”
“But I’ll probably be dead then,” Barrent said.
“That, I can assure you, won’t stop the papers from being properly served,” the fat lawyer said proudly. “Dead or alive, you will retain all your rights.””

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 2 (pp. 19-20)

“Corpses shouldn’t be forced to answer questions. Death was man’s ancient privilege, his immemorial pact with life, granted to the slave as well as the noble. Death was man’s solace, and his right. But perhaps they had revoked that right; and now you couldn’t evade your responsibilities simply by being dead.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 18 (p. 77)

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 2 (p. 7)

“Marvin did not give way to despair. He gave way instead to anger, which was a much healthier emotion, though equally unproductive.”

““You want me to tell you why reality is the way it is,” Seethwright said. “But there is no explanation for that. You must simply learn to fit your preconceptions to what you find. You must not expect reality to adapt itself to you, except very infrequently.”

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 6 (p. 28)

“How nicely you put it! We may rant against fortune and the world, but we are left at the end with the stark proposition: “These are the things which are.””

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 21 (p. 133)

“A malfunction of this type can be cured only by changing the nature of the universe, which is, of course, impractical.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 17 (p. 108)

“Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull’s lordly selection of death has seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 34)

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 35 (p. 148)

“The law,” he said, “is above the criminal and the judge, and rules them both. The law is inescapable, for an action is either lawful or unlawful. The law, indeed, may be said to have a life of its own, an existence quite apart from the finite lives of the beings who administer it. The law governs every aspect of human behavior; therefore, to the same extent that humans are lawful beings, the law is human. And being human, the law has its idiosyncrasies, just as a man has his. For a citizen who abides by the law, the law is distant and difficult to find. For those who reject and violate it, the law emerges from its musty sepulchers and goes in search of the transgressor.”

“Earth, Earth,” the short, alien Carmody mused. “I think I remember the name now. There was a recent study of isolated worlds and the peculiarities of their development. Earth was mentioned as a planet covered with an obsessively overproductive species. Object manipulation is their outstanding modality. Their project is an attempt to live in their own, ever-accumulating waste products. In short, Earth is diseased place. I believe it is being phased out of the Galactic Master Plan on the basis of chronic cosmic incompatibility. The place will then be rehabilitated and turned into a refuge for daffodils.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 15 (p. 65)

“He distrusted all laws, even the best, while at the same time recognizing the necessity for them. For Joenes, a law took its goodness from the nature of the men who administered it. When the nature of those men changed, as Joenes believed was inevitable, then the nature of the law changed, too. When this happened, new laws and new lawgivers had to be found.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 4 (p. 29)

“His friends, who had been waiting for the death announcement, came to congratulate him. They were eager to hear the complete details of the Trial by Ordeal; but Barrent had learned now that secret knowledge was the road to power. He gave them only the sketchiest outline.”

Source: Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Chapter 16 “The End of the Journey” (p. 152)

“Even rulers, notoriously the slowest of men to change, realized that something had to be done.”

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 11 (p. 52)

““Isn’t there anything you can do about the predator?” Carmody asked.
“Nothing. Nor would I if I could. Predation is a necessary circumstance. Even the Gods are eventually eaten by Fate. You will not be an exception to the universal rule.””

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 3 (p. 30)

“Remember, the inevitable inefficiency of a huge bureaucracy will be working for you.”

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 21 (p. 136)