Gray Lensman Quotes

“I know they shot first, they always do, but how does that change things?”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“Something like elephantiasis, only worse, affecting both arms and both legs. Drastic amputations indicated. Eye-sockets. Burns. Multiple and compound fractures. Punctured and incised wounds. Traumatism, ecchymosis, extensive extravasations, oedema. Profound systemic shock. The prognosis, however, seems to be favorable,”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“A man swears to keep from crying, a woman cries to keep from swearing.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“DEI EX MACHINA”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“Only loose-screwed space detectives, like me, and crackpot science-fiction writers, like Wacky Williamson, have noodles vacuous enough to harbor such thin ideas.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“She looks like an angel, but take it from me, she isn’t. She’s one of the slimiest snakes that ever crawled—she’s so low she could put on a tall silk hat and walk under a duck. I know she’s beautiful. She’s a riot, a seven-section callout, a thionite dream. So what? She is also Dessa Desplaines, formerly of Aldebaran II.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“Afraid of spies with a sense of perception—Rigellians or Posenians or such. Just killed an Ordovik on general principles, over on the next block.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“The Arisian compressed upon the Eighth’s brain a searing force which sent shrieking waves of pain throughout all nearby space.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“You love and worship power. Why? To any thinking mind it should be clear that such a lust intrinsically is, and forever must by its very nature be, futile. For, even if any one of you could command the entire material Universe, what good would it do him? None. What would he have? Nothing. Not even the satisfaction of accomplishment, for that lust is in fact insatiable—it would then turn upon itself and feed upon itself.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“there is only one power which is at one and the same time illimitable and yet finite; insatiable yet satisfying; one which, while eternal, yet invariably returns to its possessor the true satisfaction of real accomplishment in exact ratio to the effort expended upon it. That power is the power of the mind.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“if any one of you will concentrate upon one single fact, or small object, such as a pebble or the seed of a plant or other creature, for as short a period of time as one hundred of your years, you will begin to perceive its truth.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman

“With the restriction of government to its proper sphere and its concentration into our organization, resulting in the liberation of man-power into wealth-producing enterprise, and especially with the enormous growth of inter-world commerce, world-income increased to such a point that taxation could be reduced to a minimum; and the lower the taxes the more flourishing business became and the greater the income.”
― E.E. "Doc" Smith, Gray Lensman