Olaf Stapledon cytaty

William Olaf Stapledon – brytyjski filozof i pisarz. Autor kilku wpływowych dzieł science fiction.

✵ 10. Maj 1886 – 6. Wrzesień 1950
Olaf Stapledon: 113   Cytatów 0   Polubień

Olaf Stapledon: Cytaty po angielsku

“Since then two experiences have dominated me: philosophy, and the tragic disorder of our whole terrestrial hive.”

Introduction
Philosophy and Living (1939)
Kontekst: My childhood, which lasted some twenty-five years, was moulded chiefly by the Suez Canal, Abbotsholme, and Balliol. Since those days I have attempted several careers, in each case escaping before the otherwise inevitable disaster. First, as a schoolmaster, I swotted up Bible stories on the eve of the scripture lesson. Then, in a Liverpool shipping office, I spoiled bills of lading, and in Port Said I innocently let skippers have more coal than they needed. Next I determined to create an Educated Democracy. Workington miners, Barrow riveters, Crewe railway-men, gave me a better education than I could give them. Since then two experiences have dominated me: philosophy, and the tragic disorder of our whole terrestrial hive. After a belated attack on academic philosophy, I wrote a couple of books on philosophical subjects and several works of fantastic fiction dealing with the career of mankind. One of them, Last and First Men, is in this series.

“Throughout man's career intelligence and charity have been man's distinctive and most valuable assets.”

Philosophy and Living (1939)
Kontekst: Throughout man's career intelligence and charity have been man's distinctive and most valuable assets. One of our early pre-human ancestors is said to have been much like the Spectral Tarsier, a little mammal about the size of a mouse, with long wiry fingers and huge forward-looking eyes adapted for binocular vision. Not by weapons but by correlation of subtle eyes and subtle hands through subtle brain, this creature triumphed. And man himself conquered the world by the same means, by attention, by discrimination, by skilled manipulation, by versatility; in fact by intelligence and imagination in adapting himself to an ever-changing environment.

“I, at any rate, acknowledge only one master, not forty-five million two-legged sheep, or two thousand million, but simply and absolutely the spirit.”

Olaf Stapledon książka Sirius

Źródło: Sirius (1944), Chapter XII Farmer Sirius (an answer to Plaxy's rant about democracy).

“[T]he most precious gift that a lover could bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union, it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others.”

Olaf Stapledon książka Last and First Men

Źródło: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter VII: The Rise of the Second Men; Section 3, “The Zenith of the Second Men” (p. 112)

“Chapter IV: Paul comes of age”

Olaf Stapledon książka Last Men in London

fragments of poems supposedly writen by Paul
Last Men in London (1932)

“Thus the whole duration of humanity, with its many sequent species and its incessant downpour of generations, is but a flash in the lifetime of the cosmos.”

Olaf Stapledon książka Last and First Men

Źródło: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter XIV: Neptune; Section 1, “Bird’s-Eye View” (p. 206)