“Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.”
context (2) "Editorial Slot"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
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John Brunner 147
British author 1934–1995Related quotes
“We always assume that living, breathing, sensible creatures want peace.”
Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 29, p. 217

“We all live with it. That unbearable terror is what makes us such singular creatures.”
Emily Jessup
Altered States (1980)
Context: We all live with it. That unbearable terror is what makes us such singular creatures. We hide from it, we succumb to it, mostly we defy it! We build fragile little structures to keep it out. We love, we raise families, we work, we make friends. We write poems...

Source: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey

"A Defence of Baby-Worship"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

“Don't turn over the rocks if you don't want to see the pale creatures who live under them.”
Source: White Oleander
Source: Journal, pp. 27-28
Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

Source: Together is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration