Ray Bradbury - Man Quotes

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It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know Im drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can't breathe

Ray Bradbury
And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying face of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman.

Ray Bradbury
Man does not need escape so much as he needs release into a new spirit, a transcendent knowledge of himself that only Space can give him.

Ray Bradbury
The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

Ray Bradbury
That so much time was wasted in this pain.
Ten thousand years ago he might have let off down
To not return again!
A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips;
The laughter sets him free.
A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries.
The Fool is me!
And with one final shake of laughter
Breaks his bonds.
The nails fall skittering to marble floors.
And Christ, knelt at the rail, sees miracle
As Man steps down in amiable wisdom
To give himself what no one else can give:
His liberty.

Ray Bradbury
You remember winning, don't you? A battle won, somewhere?
No, said the old man, deep under. I don't remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War's never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.

Ray Bradbury
You take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That's you [our son].

Ray Bradbury
Man warring on himself an old tale is;
But Man discovering the source of all his sorrow in himself,
Finding his left hand and his right
Are similar sons, are children fighting
In the porchyards of the void?!

Ray Bradbury
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.

Ray Bradbury
That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.

Ray Bradbury
I'm being ironic. Don't interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic, it's not polite.

Ray Bradbury
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door.... Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?

Ray Bradbury
Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power.

Ray Bradbury
YOUR INFLUENCE ON US ALL, FROM 1939 ON, CANNOT BE MEASURED. I CAN ONLY SAY I REMEMBER, WARMLY, YOUR MANY KINDNESSES TO ME WHEN I WAS 19–20–21 YEARS OLD. THAT YOUNG MAN BASKED IN YOUR LIGHT AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE GRATEFUL FOR THE HELP YOU OFFERED WHEN I WAS SO POOR & NEEDFUL!

Ray Bradbury
Oh, said Brunilla, the cow-searcher. A man with wings.
That was how she took it. She was startled, yes, but she had never been hurt in her life, so she wasn't afraid of anyone, and it was a fancy thing to see a winged man and she was proud to meet him.

Ray Bradbury
We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.

Ray Bradbury
On the whole, the change had done Huxley a share of good. Death made him a handsomer man to deal with. You could talk to him now and he'd have to listen.

Ray Bradbury
Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely.

Ray Bradbury
And from above a voice fused half in iron
Half in irony gives man a dreadful choice.
The role is his, it says, Man makes and loads his own strange dice,
They sum at his behest,
He dooms himself. He is his own sad jest.
Let go? Let be?
Why do you ask this gift from Me?
When, trussed and bound and nailed,
You sacrifice your life, your liberty
You hang yourself upon the tenterhook.
Pull free!

Ray Bradbury
Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?" "To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime, Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself-" "And, adding it all up...?" "The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right.

Ray Bradbury