Alexei Panshin Quotes

#1. In any case, I hadn't gone into the subject of dorm living too deeply with him, not because I hesitated to probe his tender spots but because I would have been probing my own. This is called tact, and is reputed to be a virtue.

Alexei Panshin

#2. You can't stamp on people and not get hurt in return.

Alexei Panshin

#3. Maturity is the ability to sort the portions of truth from the accepted lies and self-deceptions that you have grown up with.

Alexei Panshin

#4. I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterwards that they were right and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions.

Alexei Panshin

#5. There's no reason to trade insults. We have our way of life and they have theirs. I wouldn't live as they do, but disrespect seems pointless. I'm sure there are good people among them.

Alexei Panshin

#6. It appears that the ground of being which underlies
and sustains us despite our various inadequate and
conflicting stories must be extremely tolerant, generous,
and forgiving. All things considered, it wouldn't hurt
if we were, too.

Alexei Panshin

#7. If I had the opportunity, I would make the proposal that no man should be killed except by somebody who knows him well enough for the act to have impact. No death should be like nose blowing. Death is important enough that it should affect the person who causes it.

Alexei Panshin

#8. Population pressure is the ultimate cause of every war.

Alexei Panshin

#9. There is something unique about the size, and shape, and feel of a real physical book, and there is a real discovery about running your eye along a line of books and picking one out because it somehow LOOKS right.

Alexei Panshin

#10. Some people get a feeling of power from being unpleasant.

Alexei Panshin

#11. The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers.

Alexei Panshin

#12. This is what makes science so hard, and ultimately so fun. Think of the limits of what we know as a great suite of rooms inhabited by vast numbers of incredibly busy, incredibly messy, nearsighted people, all of whom are eccentric recluses.

Alexei Panshin

#13. Classics aren't books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of "levels of significance" and other blatt, books that are dead.

Alexei Panshin

#14. Brains are no good if you don't use them.

Alexei Panshin

#15. Everybody should espouse three or four harmless crank theories for the pure pleasure of having something harmless to be cranky about. And when a theory of this sort proves correct, it is a true moment for celebration.

Alexei Panshin

#16. It was, if you like, an oasis in the general desert of childish and adult ignorance where we could safely bring out our thoughts and not have them denigrated, laughed at, or trampled upon, even when they deserved it. A place like that is precious.

Alexei Panshin

#17. Every man in the world is either a Realist or a Nominalist. Give yourself a test: if someone called you a gigger or a fell-picker, and you knew it wasn't true, would you hit him or smile? That's how easy it is to tell.

Alexei Panshin