Emotions - 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!

As a consequence of foresight, some of the commonest emotions of human nature are unknown on Mars. They for whom the future has no mystery can, of course, know neither hope nor fear. Moreover, every one being assured what he shall attain to and what not, there can be no such thing as rivalship, or emulation, or any sort of competition in any respect; and therefore all the brood of heart-burnings and hatreds, engendered on Earth by the strife of man with man, is unknown to the people of Mars, save from the study of our planet.

- Edward Bellamy, ''The Blindman'sWorld'' (1886)

She is not wholly heartless, but is so small that she has only room for one feeling at a time.

- J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (play, 1904)

Life without emotion is meaningless.

- F. Orlon Tremaine, ''True Confession'' (1939)

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war - which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.

- George Orwell, ''Wells, Hitler, and theWorld State'' (1941)

I never knew before how much of man's emotional life is bound up with his brain, how much more keenly he feels than any other animal.

- Poul Anderson, BrainWave (1954)

Kreton: It took us ages to stamp out disease - scarlet fever, mumps, anxiety, the common cold and, finally, the great killer itself, the ultimate disease: passion! Ellen: Passion? Kreton: Love, hate, that kind of thing. Passion - the Hydra-headed monster, so difficult to diagnose: love-nest slayings, bad temper, world wars, verse tragedies in five acts - so many variants. But at last success crowned our efforts. And now . . . we feel nothing.We do nothing.We are perfect.

- Gore Vidal, Visit to a Small Planet, revised (play, 1957)

''How is the choice determined? Is it by emotion, or by reason alone?'' ''The two are in the long run the same.'' - James Blish, A Case of Conscience (1958)

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida.

- Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

Hal 9000: Dave, I can see you're really upset about this.

- Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (film, 1968)

Pity. The most corrosive emotion endogenous to man.

- KateWilhelm, ''The Planners'' (1968)

How strange, I think objectively, that our lives are such that discomfort, pain, sadness and hatred are so easily conveyed and so frequently felt. Love and contentment are only soft veils which do not protect me from bludgeons; and with the strongest loves, one can still sense the more violent undercurrents of fear, hate and jealousy.

- Pamela Sargent, ''Gather Blue Roses'' (1971)

They were smart and had the goods and the money and the hatred. My God, they hated. That's who wins, who hates most.

- KateWilhelm, ''The Funeral'' (1972)

Anger was their aphrodisiac.

- Thomas M. Disch, 334 (1974)

He felt amorphous anger all through him, directed at nothing, fury without object, and he sensed that this was the quality of her own hate; it was a passion which went both nowhere and everywhere. Hate, he thought, like a flock of flies.

- Philip K. Dick, ''Chains of Air,Web of Aether'' (1980)

It's so easy to be temperate when one enjoys nothing, so easy to be kind when one loves nothing, so easy to be fearless when one's life is no better than one's death.

- Joanna Russ, ''Souls'' (1982)

After that, for a long time, nothing mattered. It wasn't like the not caring of the stillness, the crystal overdrive, and it wasn't like crashing, just this past-it feeling, the way maybe a ghost feels.

- William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

Some people say that love is the most powerful force in the Universe.Well, you can take it from me that it isn't. [. . .] No, the most powerful and significant force in the Universe, the one thing that gets things done and makes things happen, is aggravation.

- Tom Holt, Ye Gods! (1992)

Those who have strong passions, create strong self-destructions.

- Tara K. Harper, Wolf's Bane (1997)

Touch passion when it comes your way, Stephen. It's rare enough as it is. Don't walk away when it calls you by name.

- J. Michael Straczynski, ''Lines of Communication,'' episode of Babylon 5 (1997)

''My mother didn't have a heart, Kreacher,'' Sirius snapped. ''She kept herself alive out of pure spite.''

- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)