“Where would one find an answer? For the belief—the will to believe—was engrained deeply in the human fiber. Not entirely, either, in the matrix of the present situation, but in the blood and bone of Man clear back to the caves. There was in the soul of Man a certain deadly fascination with all things macabre. The situation as it stood had been grasped willingly, almost eagerly, by men for whom the world had become a rather tame and vapid place with no terror in it beyond the brute force terror of atomic weapons and the dread uncertainty of unstable men in power.”

— Clifford D. Simak , book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 13 (p. 101)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Where would one find an answer? For the belief—the will to believe—was engrained deeply in the human fiber. Not entirel…" by Clifford D. Simak?

Clifford D. Simak photo

Clifford D. Simak 137

American writer, journalist 1904–1988

Related quotes

“On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Low Barometer http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2934.html, st. 2 (1926).
Poetry

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It is a more rational belief that man may become a brute than that a brute may become a man;”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)
Context: It is a more rational belief that man may become a brute than that a brute may become a man; and it is an easier faith that plants and animals may dwindle down into an elemental atom, than that this atom should embrace in its organization, and evolve, all the noble forms of vegetable, animal, and intellectual life.

“Manuel stared at the place where Piet had been. The man he had known so little would now lie in this place far beyond the moon of Islam and the cross of Rome and the hammer of Marx, in a territory open and without plan, beyond man and his encasing theories, his filters, beyond the closed rooms of the civilized mind.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 6 “Aleph Null”, Chapter 3 (p. 221)
Against Infinity (1983)

“A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me in my confusion—now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait.”

Edgar Allan Poe book William Wilson

William Wilson (1839)

“Kofi Annan's kangaroo court…a clear and present danger to the war on terrorism and Americans fighting it all over the world.”

Tom DeLay (1947) American Republican politician

On the International Criminal Court ~ AP [2004 July 16] http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/040715/w071572.html
2000s

“Only now did the scales fall from my eyes. For how great is the force of credulity, how powerful the suggestion of terror! Such incomprehension! But this was a man! A chained-up man, whom I, by incomprehensible means, in a simplifying, metaphorical, and comprehensive elision, had taken for a dog.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Sanatorium at the Sign of the Hourglass” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/sanatorium/sanatorium1.htm
His father, Living things

“All the world had been at cross-purposes, had misunderstood themselves and the situation, had followed wrong paths, drawn wrong conclusions, and had known none of the facts. One would have done better to draw no conclusions at all. One's diplomatic education was a long mistake.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“In Castleford, where I was born, there are what are called sand holes. They are caves where the sand has been excavated and they run into the side of certain hillsides, quite a long distance, and you can get lost in them. Now these had a fascination for me, and as boys we would take a reel of cotton many yards long and go into the caves. But one wouldn't go further than the cotton because it was dark. You wouldn't know your way back. In those days there weren't flash lamps, so one only had a match or something, and the matches were these brimstone matches. And the caves always had this fascination for me, these holes did. Digging into something always had this fascination for me. So I think it's not so much Archipenko, because the Archipenko hole is a decorative one. I mean he makes a hole in a breast instead of a fullness, but the hole acts the same.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

1970 and later
Source: The Donald Caroll interviews, Talmy Franklin, London 1973, p. 378

“Either you are a man of unusual ability, Thorn, or a man with a rather inadequate grasp of human nature. I just hope it’s the former.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 27 (p. 495)

Related topics