Robert Sheckley citations (136 citations)

“I shall continue to live it,” Carmody said. “That is what moments are for.”
Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (pp. 189-190; closing words)

“Carmody’s jaw stiffened and he withdrew his hand. He had been pushed around long enough. Now, for the sake of his own self-esteem, he would not yield any more.”

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Robert Sheckley livre La Dimension des miracles

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

““Machines!” the Clerk said scornfully. “We have many of them, some exquisitely complex. But event the best of them are much like idiot savants. They do adequately on tedious straightforward tasks like building stars or destroying planets. But give them something tough, like solacing a widow, and they simply go to pieces. Would you believe it, the largest computer in our section can landscape an entire planet; but it cannot fry an egg or carry a tune, and it knows less about ethics than a newborn wolf cub. Would you want something like that to run your life?”
“Of course not,” Carmody said. “But couldn’t someone build a machine with creativity and judgment?”
“Someone has,” the Clerk said. “It has been designed to learn from experience, which means that it must make errors in order to arrive at truths. It comes in many shapes and sizes, most of them quite portable. Its flaws are readily apparent, but seem to exist as necessary counterweights to it virtues. No one has yet improved on the basic design, though many have tried. This ingenious device is called ‘intelligent life.’””

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Robert Sheckley livre La Dimension des miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 3 (pp. 25-26)

“Our roles are chose for us in this world by the stern dictates of an unrelenting Fate; and many a man who thought to play the emperor on Life’s stage found himself cast for a corpse instead.”

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Robert Sheckley livre Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 26 (p. 124)

“Once upon a time men resisted the implications of actuality. That day is gone. We know now that art is the thing itself together with its extensions into superfluity. Not pop art, I hasten to say, which sneers and exaggerates. This is popular art, which simply exists. This is the age in which we unconditionally accept the unacceptable, and thus proclaim the naturalness of our artificiality.”

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Robert Sheckley livre La Dimension des miracles

Source: Dimension of Miracles (1968), Chapter 28 (p. 187)

“Remember, similitude need not imply exactitude.”

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Robert Sheckley livre La Dimension des miracles

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

“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.”

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Robert Sheckley livre Les Erreurs de Joenes

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

“On Omega, the law was kept secret. Older residents used their knowledge of the law to enforce their rule over the newcomers. This system was condoned and reinforced by the doctrine of the inequality of all men, which lay at the heart of the Omegan legal system. Through planned inequality and enforced ignorance, power and status remained in the hands of the older residents.”

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Robert Sheckley livre The Status Civilization

Source: The Status Civilization (1960), Chapter 5 (p. 26)

“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.”

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Robert Sheckley livre Le Temps meurtrier

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

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

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Robert Sheckley livre The Status Civilization

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

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

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Robert Sheckley

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

“All men are mortal, he tells us, but some are more mortal than others.”

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Robert Sheckley livre Mindswap

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

““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.“”

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Robert Sheckley livre The Status Civilization

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

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

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Robert Sheckley livre La Dimension des miracles

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

“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.”

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Robert Sheckley livre Les Erreurs de Joenes

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

“Last week we revoked his Godhead; we caught him operating a life without a license.”

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Robert Sheckley livre Mindswap

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

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