Change - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

The horror of the Same Old Thing is [. . .] an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them.

- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)

''At least half of mankind,'' he observed, ''still makes an unconscious equation in its thinking, and assumes that change - any sort of change- is identical with progress. It is not so; and any student of the course of evolutionary history on Terra could tell you of change which has been regressive, change which has led to an ultimately fatal specialization, change which has been overadaptation to an ecological niche which no longer existed, or did not yet exist.''

- Margaret St. Clair, Agent of the Unknown (1952)

''Things don't stay the way they are,'' said Flanerty. ''It's too entertaining to try to change them.'' [. . .] ''Most fascinating game there is, keeping things from staying the way they are.''

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Player Piano (1952)

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1954)

Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents.

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1954)

When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)

The mind of man was uncommonly stubborn and slow to change. Reformers, including himself, were always prone to forget that. Victory always seemed just around the corner. But generally it was not, after all.

- Philip K. Dick, The Crack in Space (1965)

She was not accustomed to thinking about things changing, old ways dying and new ones arising. She did not find it comfortable to look at things in that light.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan (1971)

Change is what's boring, monotonous. Sameness is a continual challenge, almost impossible to maintain. Repetition, knowing that you've done it right before and can do it right again, is satisfying.

- Robert Thurston, ''Good-Bye, Shelley, Shirley, Charlotte, Charlene'' (1972)

A new thing is always interesting, in its trivial fashion.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''The Direction of the Road'' (1973)

Death was in him, under him; the earth itself was uncertain, unreliable. The enduring, the reliable, is a promise made by the human mind.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be - and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not, or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved.

- Isaac Asimov, foreword to Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by Robert Holdstock (1978)

Nothing in the universe ever stops except the human politic, the human solution to this problem or that. And when we stop, we fail. Stopping is the only unnatural thing there is; every force in nature, every object in the universe is in motion, changing, changing . . .

- Theodore Sturgeon, ''Why Dolphins Don't Bite'' (1980)

Of all the species, yours cannot abide stagnation. Change is at the heart of what you are.

- Maurice Hurley and Gene Roddenberry, ''Hide and Q,'' episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)

Her strength is in staying put. God, what strength! But it's all in that. So the shit piles up around her, and she never clears it away. Hell, she builds walls of it! Fecal fortifications. Defending her from, God forbid, change. From, God forbid, freedom . . .

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Half Past Four'' (1987)

The essence of human good lay in its fleeting poignancy. Only things mechlike built and shaped. [. . .] Humanity today knew the true division between the sweet passing beauties of things human, and the cruel hard mech ways. The knowledge of certain death, that nothing could be caught, that each fleeting instant had to be savored in its passing - that was the essence of wisdom. Not holding on, but instead, living fully.

- Gregory Benford, ''At the Double Solstice'' (1988)

Changing was necessary. Change was right. He was all in favor of change. What he was dead against was things not staying the same.

- Terry Pratchett, Diggers (1990)

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. 46 Children and Young People The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.

- Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents (1998)

Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change. [. . .] If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances - and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse - then you don't have life after death; you just have death.

- Iain M. Banks, Look toWindward (2000)