“We cannot count upon the secret being kept. It’s a fact of nature, and as somebody or other remarked long ago, Nature is a blabbermouth; ask the right question, and you’ll always get the answer.”
Source: The Quincunx of Time (1973), Chapter 9, “A Comity of Futures” (p. 105)
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James Blish 30
American author 1921–1975Related quotes

[Charles Vernon Boys, Soap-bubbles and the forces which mould them: Being a course of three lectures delivered in the theatre of the London institution on the afternoons of Dec. 30, 1889, Jan. 1 and 3, 1890, before a juvenile audience, Society for promoting Christian knowledge, 1896, 11]
Anatol Rapoport, "Modern Systems Theory – An Outlook for Coping with Change", paper given in the 1970 John Umstead Distinguished Lectures at North Carolina Department of Mental Health, Research Division, on 5 February 1970, and appeared in Revue Francaise de Sociologie, October 1969, p. 16
1970s and later

Brett Thomas (October 16, 1988) "Roth 'N' Roll: Flashy - But David's A Shrewd Businessman", The Sun-Herald, Section: News and Features, p. 25.
Section 4.8 <!-- p. 208 -->
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: I wish that we worried more about asking the right questions instead of being so hung up on finding answers. I don't need to know the difference between a children's book and an adult one; it's the questions that have come from thinking about it that are important. I wish we'd stop finding answers for everything. One of the reasons my generation has mucked up the world to such an extent is our loss of the sense of the mysterious.

Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 180
Human nature is evil