Thinking - 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!

Brains are the only things worth having in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man.

- L. Frank Baum, TheWonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

She does not often go out to dinner, preferring when the children are in bed to sit beside them tidying up their minds, just as if they were drawers.

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

What egoism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it!

- Edwin Balmer and PhilipWylie, WhenWorlds Collide (1932)

There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.

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

''You Earthmen think differently,'' Buster went on. ''Your minds are limber. You never say a thing is right until you've proven it. You never say a thing's impossible until you've proven that. And one right, so far as you are concerned, isn't the only right.''

- Clifford D. Simak, ''Shadow of Life'' (1943)

The human brain is often too complicated a mechanism to function perfectly.

- C. L. Moore, ''NoWoman Born'' (1944)

You mean I think like a violin, one note at a time, and you think like a guitar, a lot of related notes at a time?

- Theodore Sturgeon, ''The Clinic'' (1953)

Insofar as thought could be governed at all, it could only be commanded to follow what reason affirmed anyhow; command it otherwise and it would not obey.

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

The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

Three champions from the race of the Selectivitites arrived, Diodius, Triodius, and Heptodius, who possessed such a perfect vacuum in their heads, their black thought was like the starless night.

- Stanislaw Lem, ''How Erg the Self-Inducing Slew a Paleface'' (1965), translated by Michael Kandel (1977)

Perhaps we are incapable of rationality. Perhaps all thought is a set of impulses generated by one emotion, monitored by another, ratified by a third.

- Jack Vance, ''The Last Castle'' (1966)

You cannot use a spear to kill a flea which is biting you, and a shield is no use against a monster that could gobble you up shield and all. There is only one way to win against both a flea and a monster: you must think better than either of them.

- John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Thought itself is a disease of the brain, a degenerative condition of matter. [. . .] The mind defends itself against the disintegrative process of creativity. It begins to jell, notions solidify into inalterable systems, which simply refuse to be broken down and reformed.

- Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration (1968)

Like many intelligent men, Stone took a rather suspicious attitude toward his own brain, which he saw as a precise and skilled but temperamental machine. He was never surprised when the machine failed to perform, though he feared those moments, and hated them.

- Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain (1969)

He pondered, having many disjointed and unconnected brooding thoughts; they swam through him like silvery fish.

- Philip K. Dick, Ubik (1969)

Kimoe's ideas never seemed to be able to go in a straight line; they had to walk around this and avoid that, and then they ended up smack against a wall. There were walls around all his thoughts, and he seemed utterly unaware of them, though he was perpetually hiding behind them.

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

He was alone with his thoughts. They were extremely unpleasant thoughts and he would rather have had a chaperon.

- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982)

A stray thought, wandering through the dimensions in search of a mind to harbour it, slid into his brain.

- Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic (1983)

The inner mind is always stronger and more resilient than the thinking process we have, desperately, termed the brain.

- Tanith Lee, ''Medra'' (1984)

Human brains back then had become such copious and irresponsible generators of suggestions as to what might be done with life, that they made acting for the benefit of future generations seem one of many arbitrary games which might be played by narrow enthusiasts - like poker or polo or the bond market, or the writing of science-fiction novels.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Galapagos (1985)

His brain began to buzz gently and suck its thumb. Lots of little synapses deep inside his cerebral cortex all joined hands and started dancing around and singing nursery rhymes.

- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

It was his subconscious which told him this - that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)

Cogito ergo es. I think, therefore you is.

- Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeown, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (film, 1988)

Ptraci didn't just derail the train of thought, she ripped up the rails, burned the stations and melted the bridges for scrap.

- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (1989)

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

- Terry Pratchett, Diggers (1990)

Your brain has an immune system, just like your body. The more you use it - the more viruses you get exposed to - the better your immune system becomes.

- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (1992)

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.

- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999)