“Urban folk, dealing as they do in ideas and abstractions, become conditioned to unreality. Then, wherever the fabric of civilization breaks, these people are as helpless as fish out of water.”
Source: The Gray Prince (1975 [serialized 1974]), Chapter 4 (p. 49)
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Jack Vance 213
American mystery and speculative fiction writer 1916–2013Related quotes
“Men must be reminded that as civilization becomes more industrial and urban”
Individualism and Socialism (1933)
Context: Men must be reminded that as civilization becomes more industrial and urban, relationships become more impersonal, and that much of our sinning is done as members of groups.
“I want to get out in the water. I wanted to see fish, real fish, not fish in a laboratory.”
Interview: Sylvia Earle Undersea Explorer http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/ear0int-1, Academy of Achievement, January 27, 1991
“I am, out of the ladies' company, like a fish out of the water.”
Act III, sc. i.
The True Widow (1679)
Introduction, p. 1
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Source: Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Context: Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.
Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful.
Source: The Gray Prince (1975 [serialized 1974]), Chapter 4 (p. 48)
Pt. 1, Ch. 2 - p.31
Giovanni's Room (1956)
Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 2 (p. 22)
Quoted in How PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi gave up cricket for baseball!, 25 March 2012, 18 December 2013, Economic Times http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-05-25/news/31852241_1_ceo-indra-nooyi-bat-and-ball-sport-david-novak,