Science Fiction Quotes

“Beware:
At war
Or at peace,
More people die
Of unenlightened self-interest
Than of any other disease.”
― Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

“I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.”
― Nathan Reese Maher

“Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.”
― Anthony Burgess

“Thomas jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows.
"You met our new friend?" Miho responded, a smirk flashing across his face. "Real piece of work, this guy. I gotta get me one of those shuck suits. Fancy stuff."
"Am I awake?" Thomas asked.
"You're awake. Now eat—you look horrible. Almost as bad as Rat Man over there, reading his book.”
― James Dashner, The Scorch Trials

“If privacy had a gravestone it might read: 'Don't Worry. This Was for Your Own Good.”
― John Twelve Hawks, The Dark River

“Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man or better than a man, but not like a man.”
― John W. Campbell Jr

“Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked generation after generation; give them 3000 calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312

“Vampires, nothing more than cockroaches scattering in fear at the first sign of the light.”
― P.D. Alleva, The Rose Vol. 1

“You realize, of course, the Omegans nearly lost this Earth. They
had everything yet let it disintegrate through their rampant carelessness.
Two hundred years past they possessed the rudimentary beginnings
of the NET to bring them together. They called it the Internet.
Yet they treated it like a toy, tribalized themselves, and thus nearly lost
the planet.
“Nationalist wars, self serving ideologies, competing religions . . .
more significant, though not to the Omegans, was climate change
itself, which mattered more than any petty dogma, but they ignored
it until too late. It has ultimately determined our lives, managed now
by the CORPORATE, using the only possible tools to survive. There
were billions of Humans then. There is now but a fraction of that:
some 300 million we know in the MEGS and, of course, the uncounted
MASSes.”
― Brian Van Norman, Against the Machine: Evolution

“Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today — the age of science — science fiction is our mythology.”
― Michael Shermer

“I don't know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn't that, it's that I don't want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“With him I couldn’t be anything but myself and that scared the crap out of me, because I had never existed like that before.”
― Carlyle Labuschagne, The Broken Destiny

“... You have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more.”
― Mary Shelley

“Knowledge is like an endless resource; a well of water that satisfies the innate thirst of the growing human soul. Therefore never stop learning... because the day you do, you will also stop maturing.”
― Chidi Okonkwo

“She studied my face for a long minute. "Are you going to help my mom?" It was a simple question. But how do you tell a child that things just aren't that simple, that some questions don't have simple answers--or any answer at all?”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front

“Let the Hunger Games Begin!”
― Suzanne Collins

“In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.”
― Geoff Ryman, Paradise Tales: and Other Stories

“She didn’t watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon, like a torch burning.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

“I have been to the speed of God, sir...and I discommend it.”
― John Ringo, A Hymn Before Battle

“I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“I'm on the floor against the wall and I'm shaking. I don't know what to do. I must be dreaming. Because I now know for sure I shot him.”
― Carl Novakovich, The Watchers: The Tomb

“Once it gets off the ground into space, all science fiction is fantasy.”
― J.G. Ballard

“... something was not right... almost as if something were hiding amongst the paint... squeezed in between the brush strokes... a kind of presence bringing it alive...”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue

“This time they picked up their hand luggage and moved away from their son, following Lieges towards the air-van. But instead of changing his stance, Alain Pen just dug in hull-down. “They won’t go without me,” he told Morley confidently. “So what are you really up to, eh? I know we’re not going to Bull Crater on holiday.”
“You’ve got a vivid imagination, kid.”
“Stop calling me kid,” Alain objected. “I know something’s going on and I’ve reported it to my section leader.”
― Andrew R. Williams, Samantha's Revenge

“Trad had refused to stop until every last one of the Alliance Innesomids had been brought back under Octunnumi protection.”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue

“Your role out there is to give something back, guide the way forward... Maybe, just maybe if you spent a little less time looking out for yourself and a little more time thinking about... no, scratch that, just thinking would be a start.”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue

“Wandering these shelves, the many mechanical animals... ambled about their day, unaffected by the presence of Maiegryn and her children.”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue

“Right, so I wake up in the morgue as me, Grace, but I’m eighteen again and I’m like wow!”
― Trevor Alan Foris, The Octunnumi Fosbit Files Prologue