Alfred Bester (1913 – 1987)
American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books.
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Powell repressed the wave of exasperation that rose up in him. It was not exasperation with Chooka. It was anger for the relentless force of evolution that insisted on endowing man with increased powers without removing the vestigial vices that prevented him from using them.
Yes, no matter how we defend ourselves against the outside we’re always licked by something from the inside. There’s no defense against betrayal, and we all betray ourselves.
Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival.
He awoke. He was alive. He wasted no time on prayer or thanks but continued the business of survival.
“That’s me,” he said, motioning to the robot. “That’s all of us. We prattle about free will, but we’re nothing but response...mechanical reaction in prescribed grooves.”
“Damn you!" Dagenham raged, “Don’t you realize that you can’t trust people? They don’t know enough for their own good.”
“Then let them learn or die. We’re all in this together. Let’s live or die together.”
Now, these men weren’t idiots. They were geniuses who paid a high price for their genius because the rest of their thinking was other-world. A genius is someone who travels to truth by an unexpected path. Unfortunately, unexpected paths lead to disaster in everyday life.
“Neither of us is very trustworthy, eh?”
“Pfutz!” Reich said emphatically. “We don’t play girl’s rules. We play for keeps, both of us. It’s the cowards and weaklings and sore-losers who hide behind rules and fair play.”
“What about honor and ethics?”
“We’ve got honor in us, but it’s our own code...not the make-believe rules some frightened little man wrote for the rest of the frightened little men. Every man’s got his own honor and ethics, and so long as he sticks to ’em, who’s anybody else to point the finger? You may not like his ethics, but you've no right to call him unethical.”
Revenge is for dreams...never for reality.
We always do what’s natural, only sometimes we shouldn’t do it.
The mind is the reality. You are what you think.
The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal.
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