The abyss of time holds wonders too large to fit inside one small world, or the narrow confines of one cramped century. Science fiction is meant to tell us travelers’ tales of places and aeons men cannot reach, but imagination can.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.
The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed.
“Maybe we’re just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive” - Schlock Mercenary
WHEN WE HUNT WE KILL
NO ONE IS SAFE
NOTHING IS SACRED
WE ARE BLACKWATCH
WE ARE THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE
WE WILL BURN OUR OWN TO HOLD THE REDLINE
IT IS THE LAST LINE TO EVER HOLD
You had to hand it to Lord Vetinari, if you didn’t he’d send large men to come and take it anyway.
“So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”
“The avalanche has already begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.” - Kosh
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion I gain strength.
Through strength I gain power.
Through power I gain victory.
Through victory my chains are broken
“Your race hasn’t even reached Type 1 on the Kardashev scale. It doesn’t control the resources of this one planet, let alone a solar system or a galaxy. The Time Lords were the Type 4 civilization. We had no equals. We controlled the fundamental forces of the entire universe. Nothing could communicate with us on our level. Most races pray to lesser beings than the Time Lords.” - The Gallifrey Chronicles
“Man has a love for fire. Napalm, white phosphorus, promethium, oil, gasoline, meltas, plasmas, firestorms, incendiaries, firepower, fireline, flamethrower, fireteam, firefighter, the flames of war, fire, fire, fire. What else could be said to have benefited as much from man as fire? What other element has been defended, nursed, tutored, fed, and loved more than fire? Our cities, our books, our people, our enemies, our friends, our dead, our living, our greatest works and most heinous feats; all of them, fed to the ever hungry flames, and there it is. Years of brilliant minds worked on that one. For warfare, for country, for humanity? No. We wanted to see what fire, raw unchained flame, could do.” - Inquisitor Madek
“The question is not how to separate the innocent from the guilty. The question is how many I can burn.” - Warhammer 40k
“I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But the most damning part of it all is, I think I can live with it.” - Captain Sisko, In the Pale Moonlight
“You know, just once I’d like to meet an alien menace that wasn’t immune to bullets.” - Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Doctor Who
“Listen to me! That Terminator is out there. It can’t be reasoned with, or bargained with. It doesn’t feel remorse, or pity, or fear,or pain. And it absolutely, will, not, stop until you are DEAD! That’s what it does. That’s ALL it does!” - The Terminator
They shall be pure of heart and strong of body, untainted by doubt and unsullied by self-aggrandizement. They will be bright stars in the firmament of battle. Angels of death whose shining wings bring swift annihilation to the enemies of Man. So shall it be for a thousand times a thousand years, unto the very end of eternity and the extinction of mortal flesh. And they shall know no fear. - Warhammer 40k
“Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennium ago. They were more trouble than they were worth.” - Worf
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.Horns, horns, horns, in dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the north wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.
“And you - with your aftershave lotion and your little red car, pushing papers across a desk all day and chasing tail all night - tell me, just how the hell do you think you would look to Tiglath-Pileser, say, or Attila the Hun?”
Frederick Pohl: Day Million.
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“They’re made out of meat.”
Terry Bisson: They’re Made out of Meat.
"You’re all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.”
Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
The Turtle Moves!
The neutrinos have mutated!
Ray, is someone asks if you are a god, you say yes!
Crivens!
“Everything in the universe is older than it seems. Blame Einstein for that. We see what a thing was when the light left it, and that was long ago. Nothing in the night sky is contemporary, not to us, not to one another. Ancient stars exploded into ruin before their sparkle ever caught our eyes; those glimpsed in glowing “nurseries” were crones before we witnessed their birth. Everything we m
arvel at is already gone. Yet, light rays go out forever, so that everything grown old and decayed retains somewhere the appearance of its youth. The universe is full of ghosts. But images are lgiht, and light is energy, and energy is matter; and matter is real. So image and reality are the same thing, after all. Blame Einstein for that as well.”
“That was a hell of a thing.”
Not exactly to specs, but:
“It’s turtles all the way down!”
And who could forget: “DON’T cross the streams!”
“But what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today.”
Regards,
Shodan
Non Sequitur, your facts are uncoordinated.
I am a leaf on the wind
“I have been and always shall be your friend.” – Spock of Vulcan.
“Valar Morghulis”
“As you wish.”
“Inconceivable!”
“'Twas beauty killed the beast”
“Those are brave men. Let’s go kill them!”
I’m surprised nobody has chimed in with “Live Long and Prosper”
Because I can’t stay away…again, apologies if these have already been covered.
“You’re black on one side and white on the other.”
“I am black on the right side.”
“I fail to see the significant difference.”
“Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side.” [Later]
“All that matters to them is their hate.”
“Do you suppose that’s all they ever had, sir?”
“No, but that’s all they have left.” Star Trek: TOS, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.
[The entire book is essentially a great quote, but here are a few of my favorites from Fahrenheit 451:]
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
“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. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they fell stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”
“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.”
“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”
“Stuff your eyes with wonder,” he said, “live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away.”
[A few more from Niven.]
“No, you just hadn’t bothered to think it through. You’ll get used to that, living in the Belt.” Protector
“The cause of it all was the organ banks. With good doctors and a sufficient flow of material in the organ banks, any taxpayer could hope to live indefinitely. What voter would vote against eternal life? The death penalty was his immortality, and he would vote the death penalty for any crime at all.” The Jigsaw Man
“There’s everything in space. Monopoles. Metal. Vacuum for the vacuum industries. A place to build cheap without all kinds of bracing girders. Free fall for people with weak hearts. Room to test things that might blow up. A place to learn physics where you can watch it happen. Controlled environments—”
“Was it all that obvious before we got here?”
“Of course it was!”…Lit remembered his visitor’s age. “…Wasn’t it?” At the Bottom of a Hole.
“Over these distances even the Devil himself couldn’t hit a target as small as the Earth…But if Hamner-Brown did strike the Earth, it would be as if the Devil had struck with an enormous hammer, repeatedly.” Lucifer’s Hammer
[Some others from Dune not yet covered.]
“We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.”
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
“There are FOUR lights.”
“We apologise for the inconvenience”
(this space reserved for the one that I immediately thought of, but that left my mind as soon as I started reading everyone else’s)
“Plan 9? Ah, yes. Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead. Long distance electrodes shot into the pineal and pituitary gland of the recently dead.”
I can’t remember where “cheese eating surrender monkeys” came from, but it would be great in a mural.
Revolution begins in the thinking mind. --Ursula LeGuin
Take my life but don’t take away the meaning of my life. --Joanna Russ