Brian Aldiss Quotes

74 Sourced Quotes

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names for hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.

Brian Aldiss
The midwife bustled out to the four in the antechamber and announced that the Almighty (who had recently become a Protestant) had seen fit to bless milady with a son.

Brian Aldiss
Frank II had been back in the aptly named Mother Country for only a few months when a lady of his acquaintance presented him with Frank IV. Frank IV was a girl, christened Berenice. The state of coma which had ensnared Frank II for so long did not afflict Berenice, or any other of his descendants.
Another tremendous adjustment in the shared consciousness had to be made. That also had its compensations; Frank was the first man ever really to appreciate the woman's point of view.

Brian Aldiss
If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn't be where we are now.

Brian Aldiss
As long as the chromosome reproduced itself in sufficient dominance, he was immortal! To him, in an unscientific age, the problem did not present itself quite like that; but he realized that there was a trait to be kept in the family.

Brian Aldiss
In the extraordinary ancestral compost heap of your unconscious mind, I have burrowed too long.

Brian Aldiss
What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?

Brian Aldiss
"You and I are real, Teddy, aren't we?"
The bear's eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. "You and I are real, David." It specialized in comfort.

Brian Aldiss
It [i. e., his look] held the fatal mixture of stupidity and cunning that lurks at the bottom of all evil.

Brian Aldiss
He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of population was such that reproduction had to be strict, controlled. Childbirth required government permission. For this moment, they had waited four years. Incoherently they cried their delight.

Brian Aldiss
As Flitch dryly remarked when Greybeard commented on the graveyard, Ah, they keep a-planting of 'em, but there ain't any more of 'em growing up.

Brian Aldiss
Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed — now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down...

Brian Aldiss
The thing was not discussable, even with a near acquaintance like Calvin because … because of the nature of the thing … because one had to behave like a normal, unworried human being. That at least was sound and clear and gave him comfort: behave like a normal human being.

Brian Aldiss
Synthetic life-forms were less than ten years old, the old android mechanicals less than sixteen; the faults of their systems were still being ironed out, year by year.

Brian Aldiss
Let's have a toast—to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or assholes they have!

Brian Aldiss
I've no objection to morality, except that it's obsolete.

Brian Aldiss
Frank's chromosome conquered everywhere. Peace was guaranteed.
By the end of another century's ruthless intermarriage, Russia and Asia were engulfed as thoroughly as Europe, and by the same loving methods. Billions of people: one consciousness.

Brian Aldiss
Frank II liked Spain. Philip's capital was gayer, warmer, and more sanitary than London. It was intoxicating to enjoy the best of both courts. It proved also extremely remunerative: the shared consciousness of Frank I and II was by far the quickest communicational link between the two rival countries, and as such was worth money. Not that Frank revealed his secret to a soul, but he let it be known he had a fleet of capable spies who moved without risk of detection between England and Spain. Burly Lord Burleigh beamed upon him. So did the Duke of Medina Sidonia.

Brian Aldiss
Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!

Brian Aldiss
Many Franks of the sixteenth generation were killed in the muck of the trenches, he died not once but many times, developing an obsessive dread of war which never left him.
By the time the Americans entered the war, he was turning his many thoughts to politics.

Brian Aldiss
Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should — not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.

Brian Aldiss
The ambition of the original Frank had not died; it had grown subtler. It had become a wish to sample everything. The more bodily habitations there were with which to sample, the more tantalizing the idea seemed: for many experiences, belonging only to one brief era, are never repeated, and may be gone before they are perceived and tasted.

Brian Aldiss
All over the world there must be far-reaching changes in animal behavior and habitat; if only one could have another life in which to chart it all.... Ah, well, that's not a fruitful thing to wish, is it?

Brian Aldiss
Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.

Brian Aldiss
I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.

Brian Aldiss