Edmund Cooper (1926 – 1982)
English poet and prolific writer of speculative fiction, romances, technical essays, several detective stories, and a children's book.
Only the absurd could have any bearing on reality.
A man must either fall or rise in adversity.
On earth there are frontiers, in the sky there are none.
How does one objectively define madness ?
I believe our only hope of immortality lies in our actions, in what we do to and for others, and in our children.
He who expects little is rarely disappointed.
Men who are afraid live longer.
Self-pity, a destroyer of perspective.
But it is better to be destroyed on strange frontiers than to live in a prison of ignorance and fear.
When one flowers dies, another is born.
To be with child does not diminish beauty, but changes the shape of beauty.
Only ideals are dangerous.
Life itself has become ludicrous.
And yet to be without hope is almost to be without sanity.
For mankind may survive and live without machines, and still be civilised. But without compassion, the human race can only elaborate upon the futile cunning and the barren intelligence of the great apes.
It is an inflexible law that all living things must seek to dominate their environment.
But no one can be immune to the laws of chance.
Mankind has never been renowned for accepting logical solutions to its most serious problems. As a rule, the degre of logicality of solutions seemed to vary inversely with the urgency or seriousness of the problems.
There is no acceptable true image.
There is no truth but untruth. There is no reason but unreason.