This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.

Alfred Bester

Categorized in : Adventure Age Dying

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

passion grateful men

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

Alfred Bester

dwelling-place stars names

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

Alfred Bester

aphrodisiac quality space

Faith in faith' he answered himself. 'It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief

Alfred Bester

worthy belief believe

"There's got to be more to life than just living," Foyle said to the robot. "Then find it for yourself, sir. Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts." "Why can't we all move forward together?" "Because you're all different. You're not lemmings. Some must lead, and hope that the rest will follow." "Who leads?" "The men who must... driven men, compelled men." "Freak men." "You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory."

Alfred Bester

doubt men moving

Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.

Alfred Bester

doubt world moving

It's been suggested that most women fail to write significantly because the female mind is viscerotonic, and occupied almost exclusively with the moment-to-moment reality of emotions. If this is true, literature's loss is science fiction's gain, for Out of Bounds, Judith Merril's collection of short stories, is a warm and colorful rendering of the minutiae of the future.

Alfred Bester

loss writing reality

The appeal of science fiction has always been its iconoclasm . . . But in order to be an iconoclast, an author must be more than merely aware of the idol he wishes to destroy. He must be intimate with it and understand it in all its aspects. This means that he must have devoted serious thought to it, and have beliefs of his own which will stand up in the place of the broken idol. In other words, any child can complain, but it takes an adult to clash with accepted beliefs . . . an adult with ideas.

Alfred Bester

order mean children

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

technology mean people

Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.

Alfred Bester

lemmings freak life-is

The mind is the reality. You are what you think.

Alfred Bester

mind reality thinking

Millions for nonsense, but not one cent for entropy.

Alfred Bester

entropy nonsense cents

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

reactions free-will robots

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

Alfred Bester

natural sometimes

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

Alfred Bester

freak century age

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

Alfred Bester

life-and-death dying people

Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

Alfred Bester

rage anger said

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

Alfred Bester

priorities giving men

Most science fiction, quite frankly, is silly nonsense.

Alfred Bester

nonsense silly fiction

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

Alfred Bester

betrayal defense matter