Humanity - 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!

I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls, and that they would presently begin to revert, to show first this bestial mark and then that.

- H. G.Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)

A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don't know how it will end. Or it wouldn't be worth reading . . .

- Yevgeny Zamiatin, We (1924), translated by Mirra Ginsburg (1972)

Nor is it to be thought [. . .] that man is either the oldest or the last of the earth's masters.

- H. P. Lovecraft, ''The Dunwich Horror'' (1929)

Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.

- Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930)

Every word to which he had listened surfeited him with a sense of the immobility of humanity. Each individual related a cosmic circumstance to his particular case. Each individual planned to act independently not only of the rest of his fellows but of all signs and portents in the sky. Tony's mind conceived a picture of huge cities on the verge of inundation - cities in which thousands and even millions refused to budge and went about the infinitesimal affairs of their little lives selfishly, with nothing but resentment for the facts which wiser men were futilely attempting to impress upon them.

- Edwin Balmer and PhilipWylie, WhenWorlds Collide (1932)

There was something called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal.

- Aldous Huxley, Brave NewWorld (1932)

All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy.When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster.

- Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (1937)

When you get a real sense of proportion, like mine, you realize that humanity is nothing but a sort of skin disease on a ball of dirt, and that no effort beyond subsistence, shelter, and casual amusement is worth while.

- L. Sprague de Camp, ''The Exalted'' (1940)

Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. [. . .] As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

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

All mortals tend to turn into the things they are pretending to be.

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

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., introduction to Mother Night (1966)

This much we have learned [about humans]; here is the race that shall rule the sevagram.

- A. E. van Vogt, TheWeapon Makers (1943)

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

- George Orwell, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (1945)

What is a man? A collection of living cells and tissues? A legal fiction, like this corporate ''person'' that would take poor Jerry's life? No, a man is none of these things. A man is a collection of hopes and fears, of human longings, of aspirations greater than himself - more than the clay from which he came; less than the Creator which lifted him up from the clay.

- Robert A. Heinlein, ''JerryWas a Man'' (1947)

The so-called normal man is a figment of the imagination; every member of the human race, from Jojo the cave man right down to that final culmination of civilization, namely me, has been as eccentric as a pet coon - once you caught him with his mask off.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Rolling Stones (1952)

When they had found a good world they would guide a horde of other ''hew-men'' to it. All they had come for was to find a planet worth the trouble of taking over; if ours proved desirable they would calmly kill its present inhabitants! I caught mental glimpses of the way they imagined other forms of life. There were only two kinds in their thoughts: those that could be eaten and those that should be destroyed as inedible nuisances!

- Laurence Manning, ''Good-Bye, Ilha!'' (1952)

A man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die.

- Poul Anderson, ''Ghetto'' (1954)

That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1954)

People were never quite what you thought they were.

- William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)

With filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

- William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)

Man is the one animal that can't be tamed. He goes along for years as peaceful as a cow, when it suits him. Then when it suits him not to be, he makes a leopard look like a tabby cat.Which goes double for the female of the species.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Tunnel in the Sky (1955)

We are the only conscious castaways upon the tiny raft of the Solar System, as it drifts forever along the Gulf Streams of the Galaxy.

- Arthur C. Clarke, ''The Planets Are Not Enough'' (1956)

My dear children, don't you know what you are? What you all are? Savages, bloodthirsty savages. That's why you're my hobby. That's why I've returned to the Dark Ages of an insignificant planet in a minor system circling a small and rather chilly sun to enjoy myself, to see you at your most typical . . .

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

If a machine had broken down, it would have been quickly replaced. But who can replace a man?

- BrianW. Aldiss, ''Who Can Replace a Man?'' (1958)

[Aliens deciding whether to destroy humanity addressing a boy:] ''Have you anything more to say?'' [. . .] ''Just this!'' I said savagely. ''It's not a defense, you don't want a defense. All right, take away our star - You will if you can and I guess you can. Go ahead! We'll make a star! Then, someday, we'll come back and hunt you down - all of you!''

- Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit - Will Travel (1958)

The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell . . . Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. The HumanVirus can now be isolated and treated.

- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

Does Man have any ''right'' to spread through the universe? Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics - you name it - is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is - not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be. The universe will let us know - later - whether or not Man has any ''right'' to expand through it.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1959)

It was a species which often considered itself to be, basically, a race of divinely inspired toolmakers; any intelligent entity from Arcturus would instantly have perceived them to be, basically, a race of impassioned after-dinner speech-makers.

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

Human is as human does.

- Philip Josй Farmer, ''Prometheus'' (1961)

There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

Are we not, in the end, a clamorous prelude to the final silence, a marriage bed to engender dust, a universe for microbes, microbes that strive to circumnavigate us? We are as unfathomable, as inscrutable as That which brought us into being, and we choke on our own enigma . . .

- Stanislaw Lem,Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1961), translated by Michael Kandel and Christine Rose (1973)

People always were puzzled about how a Space Zoologist could stand being a creature other than a human being. And Space Zoologists always were puzzled about how a human being could stand being part of that conquering race called man.

- Jack Sharkey, ''Arcturus Times Three'' (1961)

What they do not comprehend is man's helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn't it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small . . . and you will escape the jealousy of the great.

- Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962)

''We are all insects,'' he said to Miss Ephreikian. ''Groping toward something terrible or divine.''

- Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962)

I needed this intellectual exercise to escape from the despair that haunted me, to prove to myself that I was a man, I mean a man from Earth, a reasoning creature who made it a habit to discover a logical explanation for the apparently miraculous whims of nature, and not a beast hunted down by highly developed apes.

- Pierre Boulle, Planet of the Apes (1963), translated by Xan Fielding (1963)

Games are important; they mark that we are not just animals trying to stay alive but humans enjoying life and savoring it.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham's Freehold (1964)

You Homo sapiens are a treacherous lot. Probably best avoided.

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

I have great confidence in Man, based on his past record. He is mean, ornery, cantankerous, illogical, emotional - and amazingly hard to kill.

- Robert A. Heinlein, ''Pandora's Box'' (1966)

What is the value of a man, compared to frumpstiggle?

- Piers Anthony, ''In the Jaws of Danger'' (1967)

Here I lie, surrounded by the silent flesh of my fellow human beings, he said to himself with a trace of bitterness, and my mind goes nattering on, as if I were back at the university lecturing to some slightly dense class of undergraduates. My body is here but my mind - perhaps, students, the central problem of man is that he is never where he is, but always where he is going or where he has come from. Thus, when I am alone I am not really alone. And when I am with someone I am not really with them.

- Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, The Ganymede Takeover (1967)

It's always easier and more impressive to tear things down rather than to build them up or even to sustain them. A human being takes a long time to grow, to mature, but it only takes a moment to damage and destroy him.

- Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, The Ganymede Takeover (1967)

[An alien describing a human:] Here is an entity which clings to personality survival with a ferocity unparalleled - yet faces Category Ultimate risks needlessly, in response to an abstract code of behavioral symmetry.

- Keith Laumer, ''Test to Destruction'' (1967)

There was the image, for instance, of man listening, listening, listening to the silent stars, listening for an eternity, listening for signals that would never come, because - the ultimate horror - man was alone in the universe, a cosmic accident of self-awareness which needed and would never receive the comfort of companionship.

- James Gunn, ''The Listeners'' (1968)

I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.

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

''Man does not change himself, according to my knowing,'' commented the butterfly. ''Not intentionally, perhaps, but he changes nevertheless. He is a discontented being who, not knowing the now-moment, wanders and searches for new things to know.What he finds changes him, not in the orderly manner in which he fitted you for conditions on this world, but in ways that are unplanned and sometimes undesirable. Occasionally he finds something very damaging to him, something that darkens his intelligence and causes him to forget much of his learning from previous findings.''

- Howard L. Myers, ''The Creatures of Man'' (1968)

Beware the beast man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

- Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, Planet of the Apes (film, 1968)

Human see, human do.

- Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, Planet of the Apes (film, 1968)

I have always known about man. From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself.

- Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, Planet of the Apes (film, 1968)

For every Man the Crucifier, there has been a Man the Healer; for every Man theWarrior, there has been a Man the Peace-Maker; and if some men have died in an attempt to kill within reach, others have died to save them. In the end, Man may destroy himself and all of life and his world - but he may not. Let's give him yet another chance and perhaps in space he will find the actual nobility of which many have dreamed and which some have practiced.

- Isaac Asimov, ''That Moon Plaque: Comments by Science Fiction Writers'' (1969)

It gave him a strange feeling to see the wrist and leg sliced open, the chest exposed - but no bleeding. There was something wild and inhuman about that. As if bleeding were a sign of humanity.Well, he thought, perhaps it is. Perhaps the fact that we bleed to death makes us human.

- Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain (1969)

Man, as such, is a biological error, possibly a too-large brain joined with a full set of primitive instincts that are no longer appropriate, but an error anyway, and [. . .] he will eventually destroy himself, or be destroyed by his environment, just as all non-appropriate forms of life seem to thrive for a while then die off.

- John T. Phillifent, ''That Moon Plaque: Comments by Science Fiction Writers'' (1969)

People are living, growing things, too. I don't know a hundredth part of what you do about bonzai but I do know this - when you start one, it isn't often the strong straight healthy ones you take. It's the twisted sick ones that can be made the most beautiful.When you get to shaping humanity, you might remember that.

- Theodore Sturgeon, ''Slow Sculpture'' (1970)

Homo can truly be called sapiens when he practices his specialty of being unspecialized. His repeated attempts to freeze himself into an all-answering pattern or culture or ideology, or whatever he has named it, have repeatedly brought ruin. Give him the pragmatic business of making his living, and he will usually do rather well. He adapts, within broad limits.

- Poul Anderson, ''The Queen of Air and Darkness'' (1971)

It was not lions that he feared. People were the problem, always forever.

- Chad Oliver, ''Far from This Earth'' (1971)

For Man, home can never be a single country, a single world, a single Solar System, a single star cluster.While the race endures in recognizably human form, it can have no one abiding place short of the Universe itself. This divine discontent is part of our destiny. It is one more, and perhaps the greatest, of the gifts we inherited from the sea that rolls so restlessly around the world. It will be driving our descendants on toward myriad unimaginable goals when the sea is stilled forever, and Earth itself a fading legend lost among the stars.

- Arthur C. Clarke, ''Across the Sea of Stars'' (1972)

She felt disgust at all mankind, mushrooming demographically and technologically, reaching for the moon, but spiritually degenerate.

- David Kerr, ''Epiphany for Aliens'' (1972)

''You know the people you're studying are going to get plowed under, and probably wiped out. It's the way things are. It's human nature, and you must know you can't change that. Then why come and watch the process? Masochism?'' ''I don't know what 'human nature' is. Maybe leaving descriptions of what we wipe out is part of human nature.''

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''TheWord forWorld Is Forest'' (1972)

Man had come, mighty man. Oh, he was smart, he was clever. He had turned the seas into cesspools, the air into sludge, the mountains into shrieking cities.

- Chad Oliver, ''King of the Hill'' (1972)

''Surely you can see that this kind of society [an all-woman society] is unnatural.'' ''Humanity is unnatural,'' said Katy.

- Joanna Russ, ''When It Changed'' (1972)

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)

And crawling on the planet's face Some insects called the human race Lost in time And lost in space - Richard O'Brien, The Rocky Horror Show (play, 1973) If the human being actually existed, how could one believe the Central Agency's prime rule: that the universe is, in every way, logical and rational?

- Dean Koontz, ''The Night of the Storm'' (1974)

If the characteristic of a thing, says Little Star, is its invariability, then surely the characteristic of a Person is passion, volition, and reason.

- Joanna Russ, ''Existence'' (1975)

Most animals, when in a hopeless situation will resign themselves to fate and perish in ignominy. Man, on the other hand, does not know how to give in. He is capable of summoning up reserves of stubbornness and resilience that are without parallel on his planet. He is able to attack anything that threatens his survival, with an aggressiveness the like of which the Earth has never seen otherwise. It is this that has enabled him to sweep all before him, made him lord of all the beasts, helped him tame the winds, the rivers, the tides, and even the power of the Sun itself.

- James P. Hogan, Inherit the Stars (1977)

Her dance spoke of nothing more and nothing less than the tragedy of being alive, and being human. It spoke, most eloquently, of pain. It spoke, most knowingly, of despair. It spoke of the cruel humor of limitless ambition yoked to limited ability, of eternal hope invested in an ephemeral lifetime, of the driving need to try and create an inexorably predetermined future. It spoke of fear, and of hunger, and, most clearly, of the basic loneliness and alienation of the human animal. It described the universe through the eyes of man: a hostile environment, the embodiment of entropy, into which we are all thrown alone, forbidden by our nature to touch another mind save secondhand, by proxy. It spoke of the blind perversity which forces man to strive hugely for a peace which, once attained, becomes boredom. And it spoke of folly, of the terrible paradox by which man is simultaneously capable of reason and unreason, forever unable to cooperate even with himself.

- Spider Robinson and Jeanne Robinson, ''Stardance'' (1977)

This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving - and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. This is what it is to be human: to persist.

- Spider Robinson and Jeanne Robinson, ''Stardance'' (1977)

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of theWestern spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little bluegreen planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

- Douglas Adams, ''Fit the Second,'' episode of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series, 1978)

Standing upright and having two hands doesn't make us human. Standing up and having ideas and ideals does! And holding fast to those ideals.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''The Eye of the Heron'' (1978)

[On humans:] The irrational appears to be not merely tolerated but highly valued among this race, and its acceptance increases as the race grows.

- John Morressy, ''The Empath and the Savages'' (1979)

Saavik: He's so - human. Spock: Nobody's perfect, Saavik.

- Jack B. Sowards, Star Trek II: TheWrath of Khan (film, 1982)

Human beings are not governed by the straightforward laws of robotics. It is therefore difficult to judge the complexities of their motivations under most conditions.

- Isaac Asimov, The Robots of Dawn (1983)

How would humans react to the situation he was in? More vigorously, probably. They would fight on. They always had. Even without leaders, with no discernible purpose, even in defeat.What gave them such stamina? Were they superior, more deserving?

- Greg Bear, ''Hardfought'' (1983)

I was in exactly the same predicament as every other human being alive: We don't know who we are, or where we came from, or why we are here. My dilemma was merely fresher, not different.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)

The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives - past and present and to come - forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. [. . .] An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?

- Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire (1985)

The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it.

- Philip K. Dick, ''How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later'' (1985)

Humanity is so adaptable, my mother would say. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1986)

''You [humans] have a mismatched pair of genetic characteristics. Either alone would have been useful, would have aided the survival of your species. But the two together are lethal. [. . .] You are intelligent,'' he said. ''That's the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save yourselves.'' [. . .] ''What's the second characteristic?'' ''You are hierarchal. That's the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It's a terrestrial characteristic.When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all. [. . .] That was like ignoring cancer.''

- Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (1987)

Human beings are more alike than different - damn sure more alike than we like to admit.

- Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (1987)

I found it hard to credit that men and women existed with an ingrained need to preserve essential humanity no matter what the cost in work and danger.

- George Turner, Drowning Towers (1987)

Humanity has the most amazing capacity for self-deception matched only by its ingenuity when trying to destroy itself.

- Ben Aaronovitch, ''Remembrance of the Daleks,'' episode of DoctorWho (1988)

Stop studying humanity. Be aware of your surroundings.

- Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation (1988)

Mechs built, that was inevitable. They sought to make of the world a place of straight lines and sharp edges, geometry made real. Eternal, rigid certainties. Men were of a different order. They sought the curved, the flexible, the live and unenduring. They lived and died.

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

Those first pyramids had been built by human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium.

- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (1989)

The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.

- Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See (1990)

Man adapts to the world, and the world adapts to man. The only thing man couldn't seem to adapt to was himself.

- Alan Dean Foster, CyberWay (1990)

What horrors were humans incapable of ?

- Alexander Jablokov, ''The Place of No Shadows'' (1990)

I remember when you knew what a human being was.

- Paul J. McAuley, ''GeneWars'' (1991)

The essence of humanity is hate.

- Judith Tarr, ''Sitting Shiva'' (1995)

Whenever one returned from planet earth, we had to take a lot of precautions. You never know what kinds of human logic you might be infected with.

- Kalamu ya Salaam, ''Buddy Bolden'' (1996)

You [humans] are erratic . . . conflicted . . . disorganized. Every decision is debated . . . every action questioned . . . every individual entitled to their own small opinion. You lack harmony . . . cohesion . . . greatness. It will be your undoing.

- Brannon Braga and Joe Menosky, ''Scorpion,'' episode of Star Trek: Voyager (1997)

Don't go human on me now, Wally.

- Paul Di Filippo, ''Queen of the Pixies, King of the Imps'' (1997)

I am nothing and nobody; atoms that have learned to look at themselves; dirt that has learned to see the awe and the majesty of the universe.

- Geoffrey A. Landis, ''Winter Fire'' (1997)

Due to a cosmic administrative blunder, the human race has been given the wrong planet to live on, so we can never quite get comfortable.

- Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic (1998)

Infinite ways of being human, Solomon Gursky thought, outbound from the sun.

- Ian MacDonald, ''The Days of Solomon Gursky'' (1998)

I know that you fear death, that time is still for you an unresolved enigma. ''What walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon and on three in the evening?'' I heard myself answer, ''An animal victimized by civilization.''

- Elisabeth Vonarburg, ''Stay Thy Flight'' (1998)

You [humans] share with others (who came from primordial forces) a grave limitation: you cannot redesign yourselves at will.

- Gregory Benford, ''A Hunger for the Infinite'' (1999)

You're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.

- AndyWachowski and LarryWachowski, The Matrix (film, 1999)

It is an historical fact: sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute.

- Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris, and David Hayter, X2: X-Men United (film, 2003)