Alfred Bester Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

Be grateful that you only see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds, the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses... Be grateful you rarely see the frightening truth in people.

Alfred Bester
I'm not much interested in extrapolating science and technology; I merely use extrapolation as a means of putting people into new quandaries which produce colorful pressures and conflicts.

Alfred Bester
"We're like millions of strands of spaghetti in the same pot. No time traveler can ever meet another time traveler in the past or the future. Each of us must travel up or down his own strand alone." "But we're meeting each other now." "We're no longer time travelers, Henry. We've become the spaghetti sauce."

Alfred Bester
Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival.

Alfred Bester
Yes, no matter how we defend ourselves against the outside we're always licked by something from the inside. There's no defense against betrayal, and we all betray ourselves.

Alfred Bester
That's me, he said, motioning to the robot. That's all of us. We prattle about free will, but we're nothing but response... mechanical reaction in prescribed grooves.

Alfred Bester
This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.

Alfred Bester
He awoke. He was alive. He wasted no time on prayer or thanks but continued the business of survival.

Alfred Bester
The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal.

Alfred Bester
Powell repressed the wave of exasperation that rose up in him. It was not exasperation with Chooka. It was anger for the relentless force of evolution that insisted on endowing man with increased powers without removing the vestigial vices that prevented him from using them.

Alfred Bester
Now, these men weren't idiots. They were geniuses who paid a high price for their genius because the rest of their thinking was other-world. A genius is someone who travels to truth by an unexpected path. Unfortunately, unexpected paths lead to disaster in everyday life.

Alfred Bester
The whole point of extravagance is to act like a fool and feel like a fool, but enjoy it.

Alfred Bester
Gully Foyle is my name And Terra is my nation Deep space is my dwelling place The stars my destination

Alfred Bester
We always do what's natural, only sometimes we shouldn't do it.

Alfred Bester
If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.

Alfred Bester
If you can have everything at fifty that you wanted when you were fifteen, you're happy.

Alfred Bester
Damn you! Dagenham raged, Don't you realize that you can't trust people? They don't know enough for their own good.
Then let them learn or die. We're all in this together. Let's live or die together.

Alfred Bester
Neither of us is very trustworthy, eh?
Pfutz! Reich said emphatically. We don't play girl's rules. We play for keeps, both of us. It's the cowards and weaklings and sore-losers who hide behind rules and fair play.
What about honor and ethics?
We've got honor in us, but it's our own code... not the make-believe rules some frightened little man wrote for the rest of the frightened little men. Every man's got his own honor and ethics, and so long as he sticks to 'em, who's anybody else to point the finger? You may not like his ethics, but you've no right to call him unethical.

Alfred Bester
Eight, sir; seven, sir; Six, sir; five, sir; Four, sir; Three, sir; Two, sir; one! Tenser, said the Tensor. Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, And dissension have begun.

Alfred Bester
I've handed life and death back to the people who do the living and the dying.

Alfred Bester
The damnable frustration of revenge. Revenge is for dreams...never for reality.

Alfred Bester
One of the things that everybody knows about space travel but never mentions is its aphrodisiac quality.

Alfred Bester