Race relations - 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!

That was another very ancient lesson: that different metabolisms produce different manifestations. How boring would the universe be if all its creatures were identically the same!

- Eric Frank Russell, ''Fast Falls the Eventide'' (1952)

I didn't like Martians. I did not fancy having a thing that looks like a tree trunk topped off by a sun helmet claiming the privileges of a man. [. . .] Nobody could accuse me of race prejudice. I didn't care what a man's color, race, or religion was. But men were men, whereas Martians were things.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star (1956)

It showed us, he decided, that the difference between say myself and the average Negro is so damn slight, by every truly meaningful criterion, that for all intents and purposes it doesn't exist.When something like that, a contact with a race that's not Homo sapiens, occurs, at last we can finally see this.

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

''Being white; that's also a religion. I can tell you in just one word what the white religion is.'' ''What?'' Joan said guardedly. ''Hypocrisy.''

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

negro Member of a sub-group of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamed - not by its residents - Africa. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis.

- John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

I am pleased to see that we have differences. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.

- Gene Roddenberry and Arthur Heinemann, ''The Savage Curtain,'' episode of Star Trek (1969)

We don't want the melting pot where everybody ends up with thin gruel. We want diversity, for strangeness breeds richness.

- Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)

To be open is to be uncertain. The lines used to be so clear between Human and Alien, Man and Woman, Now and the Future. These days, the distinctions vanish and reappear where least expected. Barriers become connections, and vice versa.Which is Us and which is Them?

- Ursula K. Le Guin, introduction to Nebula Award Stories Eleven (1977)

[A landlady addressing an alien:] ''You are concealing your actual features under a headmask. I trust you are not keeping anything important from me?'' ''We merely try to be discreet on first contact,'' Mr. Astroven said. ''However, if it is a condition for renting . . .'' He pulled off the mask and showed his real face. It was garish, variegated, surreal, and mostly green. Mrs. Dogen was visibly relieved. ''Perhaps it was foolish of me,'' she said. ''I was afraid you might be black.''

- Ted Reynolds, ''Boarder Incident'' (1977)

It is striking, the gulf that separates races developing in different star systems. We have tried to understand the Earthpersons, and we have failed.We are aware, too, that they do not understand us and are appalled in turn by some of our customs.

- Philip K. Dick, ''Rautavaara's Case'' (1980)

TheWhites did not wonder about their own culture, so they liked to study ours.

- George Florance-Guthridge, ''The Quiet'' (1981)

''Different is threatening to most species,'' Nikanj answered. ''Different is dangerous. It might kill you. That was true to your animal ancestors and your nearest animal relatives. And it's true for you.''

- Octavia E. Butler, Dawn (1987)

The world is filled with petty, narrow-minded, stupid people. They wouldn't understand you. And anyone they don't understand, they want to hurt. They hurt anyone who's different.

- Pat Murphy, ''Rachel in Love'' (1987)

One obstacle to adulthood needs to be solved immediately: We must learn not just to accept differences between ourselves and our ideas, but to enthusiastically welcome and enjoy them. Diversity contains as many treasures as those waiting for us on other worlds.We will find it impossible to fear diversity and to enter the future at the same time.

- Gene Roddenberry, ''A Letter to the Next Generation'' (1988)

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because - what with trolls and dwarfs and so on - speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

- Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad (1991)

Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk.

- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay (1996)

In the past we had little to do with other races. Evolution teaches us that we must fight that which is different in order to secure land, food, and mates for ourselves, but we must reach a point when the nobility of intellect asserts itself and says: No.We need not be afraid of those we are different, we can embrace that difference and learn from it.

- J. Michael Straczynski, ''The Ragged Edge,'' episode of Babylon 5 (1998)