Gordon R Dickson Quotes

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.

John Le Carre said that authenticity is less important than plausibility.

Facing facts is definitely preferable to facing defeat.

There never was a throne yet built so high that it could not be rocked by laughter from below.

Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time’s worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be.

More blood’s been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man.

Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?

I, wanderer, stand awaiting the signal.

Now our world is at the present time firmly in the grip of a mechanical monster, whose head - if you want to call it that - is the World Engineer's Complex. That monster is opposed to us and can keep all too good a tab on us through every purchase we make with our credit numbers, every time we use the public transportation or eat a meal or rent a place to live.

Onward, and up, and up again, until the impossible was achieved, all barriers were broken, all pains conquered, all abilities possessed. Until all was lightning and no darkness left.

I’m not an expert,” said Cletus. “I’m a scholar. There’s a difference. An expert’s a man who knows a great deal about his subject. A scholar’s someone who knows all there is that’s available to be known about it.

Sir Brian told him in fulsome scatological terms what he could do with his lineage.

We wouldn’t be capable of hope, if hope had no meaning.

the trick with modern warfare was not to outgun the enemy, but carry weapons he could not gimmick.

For sooner or later, no matter what fantastic long-range weapons you mounted, the ground itself had to be taken —and for that there had never been anything but the man in the ranks.

They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.

We’re painted savages, nothing more, in spite of what we like to think of as some thousands of years of civilization. Only our present paint’s called clothing and our caves called buildings

But I’m not an expert,” said Cletus. “I’m a scholar. There’s a difference. An expert’s a man who knows a great deal about his subject. A scholar’s someone who knows all there is that’s available to be known about it.

Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger … LESSONS: Anonymous

there was more to modern mining than logic. The best engineers had feel. It was a sensitivity born of experience, of talent, and even of something like love, with which they commanded, not only the mountains, but the machine they rode and directed. Now this too was added to the list of man’s endeavors for which some special talent was needed.

But you keep fighting!” “Of course!” said Child. “I am of God, whatever or whoever else is not. I must testify to Him by placing my body against the enemy while that body lasts; and by protecting those that my small strength may protect, until my personal end. What is it to me that all the peoples of all the worlds choose to march toward the nether pit? What they do in their sins is no concern of mine. Mine only is concern for God, and the way of God’s people of whom I am one. In the end, all those who march pitward will be forgotten; but I and those like me who have lived their faith will be remembered by the Lord—other than that I want nothing and I need nothing.” Godlun dropped his face into his hands and sat for a moment. When he took his hands away again and raised his head, Hal saw that the skin of his face was drawn and he looked very old. “It’s all right for you,” he whispered. “It is fleshly loves that concern thee,” said Child, nearly as softly. “I know, for I remember how it was in the little time I had with my wife; and I remember the children unborn that she and I dreamed of together. It is thy children thou wouldst protect in these dark days to come; and it was thy hope that I could give you reason to think thou couldst do so. But I have no such hope to give. All that thou lovest will perish. The Others will make a foul garden of the worlds of humankind and there will be none to stop them. Turn thee to God, my brother, for nowhere else shalt thou find comfort.

Suppose it was even as you think,” he went on, even more gently. “Suppose that all you say was a fact, and that our Elders were but greedy tyrants, ourselves abandoned here by their selfish will and set to fulfill a false and prideful purpose. No.” Jamethon’s voice rose. “Let me attest as if it were only for myself. Suppose that you could give me proof that all our Elders lied, that our very Covenant was false. Suppose that you could prove to me”—his face lifted to mine and his voice drove at me—“that all was perversion and falsehood, and nowhere among the Chosen, not even in the house of my father, was there faith or hope! If you could prove to me that no miracle could save me, that no soul stood with me, and that opposed were all the legions of the universe, still I, I alone, Mr. Olyn, would go forward as I have been commanded, to the end of the universe, to the culmination of eternity. For without my faith I am but common earth. But with my faith, there is no power can stay me!

Why it was all your doing," replied t

fighting an endless war and getting nowhere, surrounded by those who found simply being in the war enough to justify their existence. He

Like most people who knew themselves to be naturally favored with intelligence, his natural ego had led him unconsciously to doubt that there was much, if any, range of intellect beyond his own. But he forced himself to consider now the possibility that there might be as large a range above him as he knew to be below him—and

There was a minority among the human race, as there always had been, that found comfort in trading a personal freedom of mind and body for the relief of clinging to a stronger certainty than they were able to produce within themselves.

They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams—and still calls for more. They are fools who think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought. No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No Parthenon, no Thermopylae was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for the doing of these things was itself the doing of them. To wield oneself—to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand—and so to make or break that which no one else can build or nun—that is the greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt the sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body of his mortal enemy—to these both come alike the taste of that rare food spread only for demons or for gods.

It was the centuries-old battle of man to keep his race alive and push forward into the future, the ceaseless, furious struggle of that beastlike, god-like—primitive, sophisticated—savage and civilized—composite organism that was the human race fighting to endure and push onward. Onward, and up, and up again, until the impossible was achieved, all barriers were broken, all pains conquered, all abilities possessed. Until all was lightning and no darkness left.

there is no such a thing as an impossible, but only a thing the doing of which has not yet been learned.

A man with hallucinations he cannot stand, trying to strangle himself in a homemade straight jacket, is not a pretty sight

An open mind can always stand a closed one, if it has to- by making room for it in the general picture [of the world]. But a closed mind cannot stand it near an open one Without risking immediate and complete destruction in it's own terms. Can I closed mine there's no more room.

An open mind can always stand a closed one, if it has to- by making room for it in the general picture [of the world]. But a closed mind cannot stand it near an open one Without risking immediate and complete destruction in it's own terms. In a closed mind there's no more room.

None of this he knew. Nor would it had made any difference to him if he had, for the intellectual center of his brain had gone on vacation, so to speak, and refuse to be called back.

they’re blinded by the limited focus of their attitudes toward time and history. They only look as far as their own lifetime. No, they don’t even look that far. They only look at how things are for their own generation.

Faith,” said Amid to him, the third day out of Coby, “in its large sense, is more than just the capacity to believe. What it is, is the concept of a personal identity with a specific, incontrovertible version of reality. True faith is untouchable. By definition anything that attacks it is not only false but doomed to be exposed as such. Which is why we have martyrs. The ultimate that can be offered against any true faithholder to force him to change his beliefs is a threat to destroy him utterly, to cancel out his universe, leaving only nothingness. But for the true faithholder, even this threat fails, since he, and that in which he has faith, are one; and, by definition, that in which he has faith is indestructible.

the faithholder is his faith. He and it make, not two, but a single thing. Since he and it are one, there’s no way to take it from him. That makes him a very powerful opponent. In fact, it makes him an unconquerable opponent; since even death can’t touch him in his most important part.

there is no future—only the choice between the present as they want it or nothing at all. He and those like him lose nothing in their own terms by trading a future that is valueless for them for a here and now that sees them get what they want. But the real price of what they want is an end to all dreams—including

the contest that’s now shaping up can only be won by those who believe in the future if they work and struggle as one single people.

His eyes were curiously deep, and a warm, gray color. His mouth was thin-lipped, but a little wide and altogether friendly. His light, straight brown hair was already receding at the temples. He wore it clipped short, and he would be nearly bald before his thirties were out, but since he was not the sort of man to whom good looks are necessary, this would make little difference.

He had won. True enough, he had won over nothing more than shadows within him. Still, there was that same feeling that he had had after he had come successfully up through the cellar and past Wolf with the canned food in his arms, and the feeling following that evening in which Wolf had come to him in a new, strangely submissive manner. In both cases, he had known a feeling that he had passed some kind of watershed in his life.

It did not mean that the explanation was always immediately available. But nothing happened without a reason; particularly as far as the actions of the higher mammals were concerned. There had to be a cause for every action. That

The first rule of knife fighting,” said Nick, “is—don’t.

nearly half the half million were engaged in military occupations other than those of a fighting soldier or officer. And of the more than two hundred and fifty thousand men that this left technically available for active duty in the field, more than a hundred and fifty thousand at any one time were rendered—or managed to render themselves—ineffective through a variety of means and for a variety of causes.

the sun, which had been slipping into the far-off waterline of the horizon, took the last few degrees of its plunge and disappeared with tropical suddenness, leaving them only the fading blue of the sky.

[M]y ancient weird woke again in me.

There is a counter for every human emotional blow, deliberately given. Who knew this better than I? And I knew well the counter to anyone who tries to look down his nose at you. That counter is laughter. There never was a throne yet built so high that it could not be rocked by laughter from below.

You don’t quench ambition by feeding it any more than you quench a fire the same way... To an ambitious man, what he already has is nothing. It’s what he doesn’t have that counts.