Alexei Panshin Quotes & Sayings

Brains are no good if you don't use them. — Alexei Panshin

Night is irregular. What is not done in the daytime becomes possible at night: murder and sex and thought.
Simple men are driven to early beds by tomorrow's daytime demands and by fear of the dark, and never dream of the irregular world outside. And all the while, a viscount and a spaceport baggage boy might be passing the night rolling bok ball in the city park. That's more than unusual
that is irregular. — Alexei Panshin

Some people get a feeling of power from being unpleasant. — Alexei Panshin

If you meet life squarely, you are likely to make mistakes, do things you wish you hadn't, say things you wish you could retract or phrase more felicitously, and, in short, fumble your way along. Those "mature" people whose lives are even without a single sour note or a single mistake, who never fumble, manage only at the cost of original thought and original action. They do without the successes as well as the failures. — Alexei Panshin

The trouble is that each of us is his own hero, existing in a world of spear carriers. — Alexei Panshin

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

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

Population pressure is the ultimate cause of every war. — Alexei Panshin

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

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

I want to make it clear before we begin that I think your purpose is to learn and mine is to help you to learn, or to make you learn, though I doubt either of you has to be made. I have very little interest in writing out progress reports on you, or sticking to form charts, or anything else that interferes with our basic purposes. If there is anything you want to learn and have the necessary background to handle, I'll be ready to help you whether or not it is something that formally falls among the things I'm supposed to teach you. If you don't have the background, I'll help you get it. In return, I want you to do something for me. It's been many years since I was last a tutor, so I expect you to point out to me when I fail to observe some ritual that Mr. Quince holds essential. Fair enough? — Alexei Panshin

Valuing names as they do, Realists are sparing with them. They are likely to be known only as Joe or Bill or Plato. And they don't smile much.
Nominalists have more fun. They are known as Aristotle or Decimus-et-Ultimus Barziza, or as Edward John Barrington Douglas-Scott-Montague, or perhaps by one name in childhood and several others in the course of life.
A firm Realist misses out on one of the most satisfying of all human activities
the assumption of secret identities. A man who has lived and never been someone else has never lived.
It is true that occasionally there can be embarrassment in secret identities, but only a Realist will take the whole thing seriously enough to hit you. So have your fun, and avoid Realists. — Alexei Panshin

There is a lesson that I learned at twelve - the world does not end at the edge of a quad. There are people outside. The world does not end on the Fourth Level. There are people elsewhere. It took me two years to learn to apply the lesson - that neither does the world end with the Ship. If you want to accept life, you have to accept the whole bloody universe. The universe is filled with people, and there is not a single solitary spear carrier among them. — Alexei Panshin

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

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

If you read Rite of Passage and enjoy yourself, I couldn't be more pleased. I hope it gets you of.
On the other hand, if you should be assigned Rite of Passage, and you start to read it and it doesn't work for you, just put it aside and forget the whole thing. Tell the teacher I said it was okay. Okay? — Alexei Panshin

You can't stamp on people and not get hurt in return. — Alexei Panshin

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

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

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

A book isn't a single, static thing with one unarguable meaning. Each reader who comes to it brings his own special knowledge, habits and attitudes. Each reader reads a different book. Each reader imagines a different story.
A few years ago, for instance, a friend of my mother's sent me a copy of a test on Rite of Passage that she had given her students. The first question read: "True or False? The theme of Rite of Passage is ... " I can't tell you what the presumed themed was, but I can tell you that I didn't recognize it. Beads of sweat leaped out of my forehead. After two more questions, I had to put the test aside. I didn't know the "right" answers. — Alexei Panshin

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

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

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