Robert Sheckley Quotes

63 Sourced Quotes

Quite in vain did several lawyers point out to him that, if justice really existed, there would be no need for law and lawmakers, and thus one of mankind's noblest conceptions would be obliterated, and an entire occupational group would be thrown out of work. For it is the essence of the law, they told him, that abuses and outrages should exist, since these discrepancies served as proof and validation of the necessity of law, and of justice itself.

Robert Sheckley
All his studies had been for extraterrestrial exploration. There was no place for him on Earth; and now he was barred from space.

Robert Sheckley
Marvin did not give way to despair. He gave way instead to anger, which was a much healthier emotion, though equally unproductive.

Robert Sheckley
I'm afraid not. According to the law, you must leave here at once.
But they'll kill me!
That's very true, Frendlyer said. Unfortunately, it can't be helped. A victim, by definition, is one who is to be killed.
I thought this was a protective organization.
It is. But we protect rights, not victims. Your rights are not being violated.

Robert Sheckley
All men are mortal, he tells us, but some are more mortal than others.

Robert Sheckley
Corpses shouldn't be forced to answer questions. Death was man's ancient privilege, his immemorial pact with life, granted to the slave as well as the noble. Death was man's solace, and his right. But perhaps they had revoked that right; and now you couldn't evade your responsibilities simply by being dead.

Robert Sheckley
For Polletti, experience had brought only the bitter residue of pleasure which is the true essence of disenchantment. Certain delights which in his youth had seemed unique and unobtainable had turned out, upon acquisition, to be infinitely and drearily repeatable.

Robert Sheckley
We have propounded our beliefs in various ways, and according to various doctrines. Often we have aroused the passions of men to murder and war. This was perfectly proper, since it brought the problems of morality and religion to their highest and most exquisite pitch, and gave many complicated matters for us theologians to talk about.
We argued always, and we published our various dissenting opinions. But we argued like lawyers in a court, and nobody in his right mind listens to a lawyer. Those were the days of our pride, and we never noticed that men had ceased to pay attention to us.

Robert Sheckley
In a way it made no difference, since nothing is permanent except our illusions.

Robert Sheckley
All of us live by the employment of countless untested assumptions, the truth or falsehood of which we can determine only through the hazard of our lives. Since most of us value our lives more than the truth, we leave such drastic tests for the fanatics.

Robert Sheckley
What had he been taught? For the social good, you must be your own policeman and witness. You must assume responsibility for any crime which might conceivably be yours.
The face of the informer stared impassively at him. It was Barrent's own face, reflected back from a mirror on the wall.

Robert Sheckley
The acceptance of indeterminacy is the beginning of wisdom, the hermit quoted.

Robert Sheckley
Joenes's students quickly absorbed the material given to them, passed their tests, and quickly forgot the material. Like many vital young organisms, they were able to eject anything harmful, disturbing, distressing, or merely boring. Of course they also ejected anything useful, stimulating, or thought provoking. This was perhaps regrettable, but it was part of the educative process to which every teacher had to accustom himself.

Robert Sheckley
It is a truism throughout the civilized galaxy that when you go to the police, your troubles really begin.

Robert Sheckley
Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull's lordly selection of death has seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter.

Robert Sheckley
He shook his head violently, pulled himself together and swallowed a stiff dose of Infradex, a drug designed to alleviate drug reactions. Within seconds he was his old, normally depressed self. This cheered him considerably, and he left the hut in a mood teetering on the edge of equanimity.

Robert Sheckley
Well, no sense crying over unspilt blood, the Prize Clerk said. If we took full account of our eventualities, we'd soon run out of eventualities for us to take full account of.

Robert Sheckley
For love, as he knew it, was an aberration, a form of temporary insanity, a short-lived state of autosuggestion.

Robert Sheckley
Isn't there anything you can do about the predator? Carmody asked.
Nothing. Nor would I if I could. Predation is a necessary circumstance. Even the Gods are eventually eaten by Fate. You will not be an exception to the universal rule.

Robert Sheckley
The deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man's patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure, the greatest deed of his life. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.

Robert Sheckley
He distrusted all laws, even the best, while at the same time recognizing the necessity for them. For Joenes, a law took its goodness from the nature of the men who administered it. When the nature of those men changed, as Joenes believed was inevitable, then the nature of the law changed, too. When this happened, new laws and new lawgivers had to be found.

Robert Sheckley
They were shunned, and they had reacted to exclusion by exclusiveness.

Robert Sheckley
A malfunction of this type can be cured only by changing the nature of the universe, which is, of course, impractical.

Robert Sheckley
And yet, Blaine thought, mankind showed an historic ability to avoid the extremes of doom as well as the extremes of bliss. Chaos was forever prophesized and utopia was continually predicted, and neither came to pass.

Robert Sheckley
Reilly was fairly sure he'd survive after death; but he saw no reason to take chances. Also, Mr. Kean says that the very rich, like the very religious, wouldn't enjoy a hereafter filled with just anybody. They think that, by suitable rites and symbols, they can get into a more exclusive part of the hereafter.

Robert Sheckley
Even rulers, notoriously the slowest of men to change, realized that something had to be done.

Robert Sheckley
I'll follow the reedy tenor of his excuses and blast them with the bellowy bass of irrefutable logic!

Robert Sheckley
Why in God's name should a God be praised if he is only performing his Godly function?

Robert Sheckley
Time devours our feeble mortality, leaving us with but the sour residue of memory.
Marvin nodded. Yet this ineffable and ungraspable quantity, he replied, this time which no man may possess, is in truth our only possession.

Robert Sheckley
He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable—a routine miracle.

Robert Sheckley