The universe - 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 Great Architect of the universe built it of good firm stuff.

- Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), translated by William Butcher (1992)

In such a universe as this what significance could there be in our fortuitous, our frail, our evanescent community?

- Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (1937)

The universe, or the maker of the universe, must be indifferent to the fate of worlds. That there should be endless struggle and suffering and waste must of course be accepted; and gladly, for these were the very soil in which the spirit grew. But that all struggle should be finally, absolutely vain, that a whole world of sensitive spirits should fail and die, must be sheer evil. In my horror it seemed to me that Hate must be the Star Maker.

- Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (1937)

In that instant when I had seen the blazing star that was the Star Maker, I had glimpsed, in the very eye of that splendour, strange vistas of being; as though in the depths of the hypercosmical past and the hypercosmical future also, yet coexistent in eternity, lay cosmos beyond cosmos.

- Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker (1937)

ToWaldo the universe was the enemy, which he strove to force to submit to his will.

- Robert A. Heinlein, ''Waldo'' (1942)

He looked at the woman's handsome, impassive face for a clue; at the eyes that were black but not brilliant, the hawklike nose, the finely cut mouth. But there was no clue in them. They held only one comment on the universe, on all that was in it. They said, I am tired of you. Nothing more.

- Doris Pitkin Buck, ''Aunt Agatha'' (1952)

In the endless universe there is nothing new, nothing different.What may appear exceptional to the minute mind of man may be inevitable to the infinite Eye of God. This strange second in a life, that unusual event, those remarkable coincidences of environment, opportunity, and encounter . . . all may be reproduced over and over on the planet of a sun whose galaxy revolves once in two hundred million years and has revolved nine times already. There are and have been worlds and cultures without end, each nursing the proud illusion that it is unique in space and time. There have been men without number suffering from the same megalomania; men who imagined themselves unique, irreplaceable, irreproducible. There will be more . . . more plus infinity.

- Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man (1953)

Will none wipe the sneer off the face of the cosmos?

- Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (1954)

He had seen too much of the cosmos to have any great faith in man's ability to understand it.

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

Alvin would never grow up; to him the whole Universe was a plaything, a puzzle to be unraveled for his own amusement.

- Arthur C. Clarke, The City and the Stars (1956)

There was a God, and He wasn't mean. His universe was a deadly contraption, but maybe there wasn't any way to build a universe that wasn't a deadly contraption - like a square circle. He made the contraption, and He put Man in it, and Man was a fairly deadly contraption himself. But the funny part of it was, therewasn't a damn thing the universe could do to a man that a man wasn't built to endure. He could even endure it when it killed him. And gradually he could get the better of it.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., ''The Lineman'' (1957)

In the long run, when we get right down to the fundamental stuff of the universe, we'll find that there's nothing there at all - just no-things moving no-place through no-time.

- James Blish, A Case of Conscience (1958)

He had the dim realization that the universe, like a huge sleepy animal, knew what he was trying to do and was trying to thwart him. This feeling of opposition made him determined to outmaneuver the universe - not the first guy to yield to such a temptation, of course.

- Fritz Leiber, ''Try and Change the Past'' (1958)

''The universe,'' Omar Diamond pointed out, ''possesses an infinitude of ways by which it fulfills itself.''

- Philip K. Dick, Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)

If you think upon it, O King, you will see how very ludicrous is the Universe . . .

- Stanislaw Lem, ''King Globares and the Sages'' (1965), translated by Michael Kandel (1977)

By squandering nuclear energy, polluting asteroids and planets, ravaging the Preserve, and leaving litter everywhere we go, we shall ruin outer space and turn it into one big dump. It is high time we came to our senses and enforced the laws. Convinced that every minute of delay is dangerous, I sound the alarm: Let us save the Universe.

- Stanislaw Lem, ''Let Us Save the Universe (An Open Letter from Ijon Tichy, Space Traveller)'' (1966), translated by Joel Stern and Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek (1981)

You cannot program the universe you sons of bitches, there are things going on outside of all of this which you cannot envision let alone understand and there must be an end to this banality: do you understand that? It has got to end sometime. The universe is vast, man is small, you fucking sons of bitches.

- Barry N. Malzberg, ''Still Life'' (1972)

No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.

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

If, instead of the Mother's cloak, there was unimaginable vastness speckled with tiny lonely suns, then nothing circled the earth, the Universe was cold and empty, the Mother did not live, and they were all alone.

- Mildred Downey Broxon, ''The Night Is Cold, the Stars Are Far Away'' (1974)

You begin to suspect that if there's any real truth it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.

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

It is our station to live within laws that give us being, but offer of themselves no purpose or promise, no triumph as a species. The universe allows us a place in its systematic workings but only cares for the system itself, not us.

- Gregory Benford, ''Starswarmer'' (1978)

It was as if the universe itself stretched out its finger to touch me. And in touching me, singling me out, it only heightened my awareness of my own insignificance. That was somehow very comforting.When you confront the absolute indifference of magnitudes and vistas so overwhelming, the swollen ego of your own self-important suffering is diminished . . .

- Joan D. Vinge, ''View from a Height'' (1978)

There is a universe out there, a universe of life, objects, and events. There are differences, but it is all the same universe, and we all must obey the same universal laws.

- Barry B. Longyear, ''Enemy Mine'' (1979)

We see the universe as it is, Father Damien, and these naked truths are cruel ones.We who believe in life, and treasure it, will die. Afterward there will be nothing, eternal emptiness, blackness, nonexistence. In our living there has been no purpose, no poetry, no meaning. Nor do our deaths possess these qualities.When we are gone, the universe will not long remember us, and shortly it will be as if we had never lived at all. Our worlds and our universe will not long outlive us. Ultimately entropy will consume all, and our puny efforts cannot stay that awful end.

- George R. R. Martin, ''TheWay of Cross and Dragon'' (1979)

Clearly the problem on this planet had to do with some fundamental misunderstanding of the workings of the universe.

- S. P. Somtow, ''The Thirteenth Utopia'' (1979)

An infinity of universes swim in superspace, all passing through their own cycles of birth and death; some are novel, others repetitious; some produce macrolife, others do not; still others are lifeless. In time, macrolife will attempt to reach out from its cycles to other space-time bubbles, perhaps even to past cycles, which leave their echoes in superspace, and might be reached. In all these ambitions, only the ultimate pattern of development is unknown, drawing macrolife toward some future transformation still beyond its view. There are times when the oldest macrolife senses that vaster intelligences are peering in at it from some great beyond . . .

- George Zebrowski, Macrolife (1979)

The whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.

- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)

The sky of New Niger is the sky of Old Earth; our souls are pieces of one great eggshell enclosing the universe!

- Suzy McKee Charnas, ''Scorched Supper on New Niger'' (1980)

This Universe never did make sense; I suspect that it was built on government contract.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast (1980)

She wove the tapestry and was the tapestry. The pictures filled her with happiness. The universe was her lover.

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

He shook his head sharply in the hope that it might dislodge some salient fact which would fall into place and make sense of an otherwise utterly bewildering Universe.

- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1985)

The vision of a populated Galaxy, of a universe spilling over with life and intelligence, made her want to cry for joy.

- Carl Sagan, Contact (1985)

The Captain looked up at the stars, and his big brain told him that his planet was an insignificant speck of dust in the cosmos, and that he was a germ on that speck, and that nothing could matter less than what became of him. That was what those big brains used to do with their excess capacity: blather on like that.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Galapagos (1985)

The universe doesn't know good or bad, only less or more.

- Pat Cadigan, ''Angel'' (1987)

All the universe is just a dream in God's mind, and as long as he's asleep, he believes in it, and things stay real.

- Orson Scott Card, Seventh Son (1987)

At least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.

- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites (1987)

Angel, like everyone else, comes from somewhere and goes somewhere else. She lives in that linear and binary universe. However, like everyone else, she lives concurrently in another universe less simple. Trivalent, quadrivalent, multivalent. World without end, with no amen. And so, on.

- Candas Jane Dorsey, ''(Learning about) Machine Sex'' (1988)

There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.

- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards! (1989)

We humans have always seen in the universe a mirror of our selves.

- Joan Slonczewski, TheWall around Eden (1989)

I pity you. We live in a universe of magic, which evidently you cannot see.

- Philip Lazebnik, ''Devil's Due,'' episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991)

We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own.

- Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless (1992)

The galaxy doesn't spin on your whims.

- Tara K. Harper, Lightwing (1992)

We are not lords of the universe.We're one small part of it.We may be its consciousness, but being the consciousness of the universe does not mean turning it all into a mirror image of us. It means rather fitting into it as it is, and worshiping it with our attention.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

Perhaps the universe, too, has some heart, some mind somewhere, which can feel pride.Which can know its offspring thrive, and feel joy.

- David Brin, ''What Continues, What Fails'' (1993)

The universe is none of our business.

- Joan Slonczewski, Daughter of Elysium (1993)

The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest.

- Marc Scott Zicree, ''Survivors,'' episode of Babylon 5 (1994)

I would like to have more trust in dying. Maybe it's worth while, like some kind of answering, coming into another place. Like I felt that winter in the Siskiyous, walking on the snow road between black firs under all the stars, that I was the same size as the universe, the same thing as the universe. And if I kept on walking ahead there was this glory waiting for me.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Ether, OR'' (1995)

Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense. The goal is the Theory of Everything, but Ponder would settle for the Theory of Something and, late at night, when Hex appeared to be sulking, he despaired of even a Theory of Anything.

- Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent (1998)