Alfred Bester Quotes

Any man was capable of jaunting provided he developed two faculties, visualization and concentration. He had to visualize, completely and precisely, the spot to which he desired to teleport himself; and he had to concentrate the latent energy of his mind into a single thrust to get him there. Above all, he had to have faith.

Damn you!" Dagenham raged, "Don't you realize that you can't trust people? They don't know enough for their own good." "Then let them learn or die. We're all in this together. Let's live or die together.

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

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

The flamboyant diva in eye-catching costume was Queenie in drag. We have never been able to persuade him to undergo a transsex transformation. He says he prefers remaining a faggot.

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

Every man nurses the secret belief that were he God he could do the job much better.

We were mugged by some senior citizens on the way from the chopper to the main gate, but no great harm done; they were using vintage revolvers.

How is it brought to critical mass. Presteign? How is the energy released?'
'As the original energy was generated, in the beginning of time,' Presteign droned. 'Through Will and Idea.

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

No," Foyle roared. "Let them hear this. Let them hear everything."

"You're insane, man. You've handed a loaded gun to children."

"Stop treating them like children and they'll stop behaving like children. Who the hell are you to play monitor?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Stop treating them like children. Explain the loaded gun to them. Bring it all out into the open." Foyle laughed savagely. "I've ended the last star-chamber conference in the world. I've blown that last secret wide open. No more secrets from now on.... No more telling the children what's best for them to know.... Let 'em all grow up. It's about time."

"Christ, he is insane."

"Am I? I've handed life and death back to the people who do the living and the dying. The common man's been whipped and led long enough by driven men like us.... Compulsive men... Tiger men who can't help lashing the world before them. We're all tigers, the three of us, but who the hell are we to make decisions for the world just because we're compulsive? Let the world make its own choice between life and death. Why should we be saddled with the responsibility?"

"We're not saddled," Y'ang-Yeovil said quietly. "We're driven. We're forced to seize responsibility that the average man shirks."

"Then let him stop shirking it. Let him stop tossing his duty and guilt onto the shoulders of the first freak who comes along grabbing at it. Are we to be scapegoa

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.

The whole point of extravagance is to act like a fool and feel like a fool, but enjoy it.

You pigs, you. You rut like pigs, is all. You got the most in you, and you use the least. You hear me, you? Got a million in you and spend pennies. Got a genius in you and think crazies. Got a heart in you and feel empties. All a you. Every you ... '
[ ... ]
Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you! All right, God damn you! I challenge you, me. Die or live and be great. Blow yourselves to Christ gone or come and find me, Gully Foyle, and I make you men. I make you great. I give you the stars.

This is Armageddon ... Flowering Monstrosity. Tell me what you see." "There's

There is no sun.

Century also had shelves of obsolete printed books.

I'm a great believer in people and their untapped potential.

Take a war to make you spend. Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great. Rest of the time you sit around lazy, you. Pigs, you!

He was afflicted with an education and a sense of humor. He was inspired by a purpose. He was armed with a phone book. He was doomed.

Most science fiction, quite frankly, is silly nonsense.

I'm not a robot. I'm a freak of the universe ... a thinking animal ... and I'm trying to see my way clear through this morass.

You're all freaks, sir. But you always have been freaks. Life is a freak. That's its hope and glory.

Listen," he cried in exaltation. "Listen, normals! You must learn what it is. You must learn how it is. You must tear the barriers down. You must tear the veils away. We see the truth you cannot see ... That there is nothing in man but love and faith, courage and kindness, generosity and sacrifice. All else is only the barrier of your blindness. One day we'll all be mind to mind and heart to heart ...

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

Make it a human war,' she said fiercely. 'You're the first not to be deceived by my looks. Oh God! The boredom of the chivalrous knights and their milk-maid passion for the fairy tale princess. But I'm not like that ... inside. I'm not. I'm not. Never. Make it a savage war between us. Don't win me ... destroy me!

Intellect is the ability to avoid belaboring the obvious.

A man is a member of society first, and an individual second. You must go along with society, whether it chooses destruction or not.

Vorga, I kill you filthy.

Eight, sir; seven, sir; Six, sir; five, sir; Four, sir; Three, sir; Two, sir; one! Tenser, said the Tensor. Tenser, said the Tensor. Tension, apprehension, And dissension have begun.

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.

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.

The acid of fury ran through him, eating away the brute patience and sluggishness that had made a cipher of Gully Foyle, precipitating a chain of reactions that would make an infernal machine of Gully Foyle. He was dedicated.

The damnable frustration of revenge. Revenge is for dreams ... never for reality.

You can't go back and you can't catch up. Happy endings are always bittersweet.

Are you that dreadful man with the circus, Fourmyle?" "Sure you are. Smile." "I am, madam. You may touch me." "Why, you actually seem proud. Are you proud of your bad taste?" "The problem today is to have any taste at all." "The problem today is to have any taste at all. I think I'm lucky." "Lucky but dreadfully indecent." "Indecent but not dull." "And dreadful but delightful. Why aren't you cavorting now?" "I'm 'under the influence,' Madam." "Oh dear. Are you drunk? I'm Lady Shrapnel. When will you be sober again?" "I'm under your influence, Lady Shrapnel." "You wicked young man. Charles! Charles, come here and save Fourmyle. I'm ruining him.

If you can have everything at fifty that you wanted when you were fifteen, you're happy.

You can tell when a Hollywood historical film was made by looking at the eye makeup of the leading ladies, and you can tell the date of an old science fiction novel by every word on the page. Nothing dates harder and faster and more strangely than the future.

Don't you ever run away?'
'Never. Escape is for cripples. Neurotics.

Cellar Christians!" Foyle exclaimed. He and Robin peered through the window. Thirty worshipers of assorted faiths were celebrating the New Year with a combined and highly illegal service. The twenty-fourth century had not yet abolished God, but it had abolished organized religion.
"No wonder the house is man-trapped," Foyle said. "Filthy practices like that. Look, they've got a priest and a rabbi, and that thing behind them is a crucifix."
"Did you ever stop to think what swearing is?" Robin asked quietly. "You say 'Jesus' and 'Jesus Christ.' Do you know what that is?"
"Just swearing, that's all. Like 'ouch' or 'damn.'"
"No, it's religion. You don't know it, but there are two thousand years of meaning behind words like that."
"This is no time for dirty talk," Foyle said impatiently. "Save it for later. Come on.

Every child in the world imagines that its phantasy world is unique to itself. Psychiatry knows that the joys and terrors of private phantasies are a common heritage shared by all mankind. Fears, guilts, terrors, and shames could be interchanged, from one man to the next, and none would notice the difference.

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

He had reached a dead end. He had been content to drift from moment to moment of existence for thirty years like some heavily armored creature, sluggish and indifferent.

You are the first to arrive alive in fifty years. You are a puissant man. Arrival of the fittest is the doctrine of the Holy Darwin. Most scientific.

The test of intellect is the refusal to belabor the obvious.

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

Why is life? Don't ask about it. Live it.

They were blind to a cold fact of evolution ... that progress stems from the clashing merger of antagonistic extremes, out of the marriage of pinnacle freaks.

If a man's got talent and guts to buck society, he's obviously above average. You want to hold on to him. You straighten him out and turn him into a plus value. Why throw him away? Do that enough and all you've got left are the sheep.