Mark Clifton citations

Mark Clifton, né en 1906 et mort en 1963, est un écrivain américain de science-fiction, colauréat du prix Hugo du meilleur roman 1955. Il a commencé à être publié en mai 1952 avec l'anthologie What Have I Done?. Wikipedia

✵ 1906 – 1963

Mark Clifton: 23 citations0 J'aime

Mark Clifton: Citations en anglais

“There had been many times when man had been forced to adopt the only right opinion. Each time man’s forward thrust had slackened, vegetated, and died. Once, through the dark ages, the period had lasted almost a thousand years.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 19.

“Everyone recognized that only five percent of all the people born ever amount to anything at all. Everyone humbly thanked his providential stars that through his own personal efforts and merit he had become one of the superior five percent. Everyone looked with pity and contempt upon the ninety-five percent who did not share his grace.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 175.

“Instant acceptance of an idea is as self-defeating as instant rejection.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 163.

“The public wants miracles. The public demands miracles; and if one source ceases to provide them, they will turn to another source which seems to accomplish the spectacular. Even while they resented and opposed the scientific attitude, they lapped up the miracles which this attitude accomplished with glee.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 76-77.

““There’s only one way to guard a secret so effectively that no one can misuse it to his own advantage and the detriment of others,” Kennedy mused slowly, “And that’s to give it away—make it open knowledge. Give it to everybody.”
“Scientists have known that for a long time,” Hoskins said, “That’s why we keep insisting on free trade of ideas.””

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 180.

“Truth frightens man. He plants illusion in the debris of his mind to hide him from the clean white light she brings. His arguments defeat her wisdom. In his preconceptions and prejudices he dictates, in advance, what form she must take, what garments she must wear; and because of this he often does not recognize her when they meet. His illusion drives her from him.
And yet he still yearns and seeks for truth.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 187.

“Think back through all the eras of history—the major ones, the tiny obscure ones known only to scholars. Can you think of a man, ever, who was capable of fashioning the future development of mankind to suit his own idea of it—no matter how noble that ideal may have been? Wouldn’t that be just another form of opinion control—no matter how splendid the conception?”
Kennedy did not turn around.
“It takes a great deal of faith in mankind to keep from directing it the way we think it should go,” he said at last.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 92.

“A human being is seldom bothered with insufficient data; often the less he has the more willing he is to give a firm opinion; and man prefers some answer, even a wrong one, to the requirement that he dig deeper and find out the facts.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 49.

“He quickly lowered his eyes to his knees again, to conceal the pain in them, to conceal his broken faith in the innate goodness of men, the profound despair of realization that reason might not after all triumph over ignorance.
“Perhaps,” he murmured aloud, “To believe in the inevitable triumph of rationality might, in itself, be no more than another expression of those same superstitions which we deplore in the ignorant. It is apparently an occupational disease, perhaps a fatal one, for the scientist to be too sanguine about eventual rule by reason. There is so little evidence…””

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 16.

“In either event he could only adhere to the letter of the law, but then for every yea in the law there was a nay, and it always boiled down to simple expediency. Like a psychiatric diagnosis, it could always be juggled around to fit anything you chose.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 79.

“That kind of therapy, the use of force to make a man give up his convictions, has been tried since the dawn of history. I think we should have learned by now that it won’t work.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 130.

“People will tie in with a fanatic if for no other reason than to break the monotony of their lives.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 176.

“The universe does not care whether man unlocks its secrets or leaves them closed. Water does not care whether man bathes in it or drowns in it; whether it waters his fields or washes them away. If man masters its laws and utilizes his knowledge, water becomes a force in his favor. But enemy or servant, water does not care.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 48.

“At this stage of man’s evolution, our scientists have been like little children facing a table piled high with the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One piece is picked up and its holder says, “This is the important piece. I hold the one key to everything in my hands.” Well, of course, he does. Because every piece is a key piece.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 177.

“It (objection to a machine that could think) was the hook used by the rabble rousers, whose monopoly of moral interpretation might be challenged.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 18.

“The suppressed hunger to think was like an epidemic.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 17.

“Logical rationality is neither subversive nor nonsubversive. It is simply a statement of fact.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 17-18.

“Early in his career Hoskins had realized that no field of science is remote from the affairs of men, that there is a sociological implication inherent even in the simple set of screwing a nut on a bolt.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 29-30.

“To say that man has already achieved the ultimate and absolute truth is like a tribal taboo which says that a given river may never be crossed because the witch doctor proves beyond all reason that there is only chaos beyond.
The most puzzling of all contradictory concepts given me is the human will to set up such arbitrary limits to his comprehension.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 109.

“He was not psychotic enough to set himself up as a chosen arbiter of mores and laws.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 122.

“Water does not care whether you bathe in it or drown in it. The mountains do not care whether you climb them or go around them. The stars do not care whether man reaches them or not. The universe does not care whether man masters all the relationships of its forces and processes, or dies because he refuses to master them. Life continues as it uses those relationships to further its growth. It ceases when it becomes overcome by still other forces which it cannot master.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 188.

“It’s pretty human to smash the guy or the thing which tries to tell us something we don’t want to hear.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 179.

“Think back through all the eras of history—the major ones, the tiny obscure ones known only to scholars. Can you think of a man, ever, who was capable of fashioning the future development of mankind to suit his own idea of it—no matter how noble that ideal may have been? Wouldn’t that be just another form of opinion control—no matter how splendid the conception?”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton livre They'd Rather Be Right

Kennedy did not turn around.
“It takes a great deal of faith in mankind to keep from directing it the way we think it should go,” he said at last.
Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 92.

Auteurs similaires

Richard Bach photo

Richard Bach8

écrivain américain None

Kurt Vonnegut photo

Kurt Vonnegut29

écrivain américain None

John Steinbeck photo

John Steinbeck18

écrivain américain None

William Faulkner photo

William Faulkner18

écrivain américain None

Ray Bradbury photo

Ray Bradbury20

écrivain américain None

Jack London photo

Jack London12

écrivain américain None

Vladimir Nabokov photo

Vladimir Nabokov39

écrivain None

Francis Scott Fitzgerald photo

Francis Scott Fitzgerald18

écrivain américain None

Anaïs Nin photo

Anaïs Nin16

écrivain américaine None

Charles Bukowski photo

Charles Bukowski19

écrivain américain None