Clifford D. Simak Quotes & Sayings

And that day the cultural god of science had shone a bit less brightly, had died a little in the people's minds. — Clifford D. Simak

Race preservation is a myth ... a myth that you all have lived by - a sordid thing that has arisen out of your social structure. The race ends every day. When a man dies the race ends for him - so far as he's concerned there is no longer any race. — Clifford D. Simak

We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques - that working together, by putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant than any race, alone, could hope of accomplishing. — Clifford D. Simak

But when a tree speaks to one, what is one to do? On — Clifford D. Simak

And why should I," asked Joe, "do something for someone who isn't even born yet? Why should I look beyond the years of my own life? When I die, I die, and all the shouting and the glory, all the banners and the bugles will be nothing to me. I will not know whether I lived a great life or a very poor one." "The race," said Grant. Joe laughed, a shout of laughter. "Race preservation, race advancement. That's what you're getting at. Why should you be concerned with that? Or I?" The — Clifford D. Simak

There are certain segments of society that will never lend an ear to a new idea. They squat in a certain place and will not budge from it. They will find many reasons to maintain a way of life that is comfortable to them. They'll cling to old religions; they'll fasten with the grip of death on ethics that were dead, without their knowing it, centuries before; they will embrace a logic that can be blown over with a breath, still claiming it is sacrosanct. — Clifford D. Simak

He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its consequences. With — Clifford D. Simak

This is written in the elder days as the Earth rides close to the rim of eternity, edging nearer to the dying Sun, into which her two inner companions of the solar system have already plunged to a fiery death. The Twilight of the Gods is history; and our planet drifts on and on into that oblivion from which nothing escapes, to which time itself may be dedicated in the final cosmic reckoning. — Clifford D. Simak

Must faith be exactly that, the willingness and ability to believe in the face of a lack of evidence? If one could find the evidence, would then the faith be dead? — Clifford D. Simak

Unconventional," said Jenkins. "What is conventional?" asked Andrew. "Living in a dream? Living for a memory? you must be weary of it." "Not — Clifford D. Simak

Man's inability to understand and appreciate the thought and viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome. — Clifford D. Simak

It's like coming home," said Webster and he wasn't talking to the dog. "It's like you've been away for a long, long time and then you come home again. And it's so long you don't recognize the place. Don't know the furniture, don't recognize the floor plan. But you know by the feel of it that it's an old familiar place and you are glad you came."
"I like it here," said. Ebenezer and he meant Webster's lap, but the man misunderstood.
"Of course, you do," he said. "It's your home as well as mine. More your home, in fact, for you stayed here and took care of it while I forgot about it. — Clifford D. Simak

If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry - yours and mine - back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet. — Clifford D. Simak

When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. — Clifford D. Simak

And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe. — Clifford D. Simak

As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it. He — Clifford D. Simak

We came into a homeless frontier, a place where we were not welcome, where nothing that lived was welcome, where thought and logic were abhorrent and we were frightened, but we went into this place because the universe lay before us, and if we were to know ourselves, we must know the universe — Clifford D. Simak

We have fallen on hard times of the spirit, with many of the people more concerned with fear of evil than contemplation of the good. — Clifford D. Simak

I can't go back," said Towser.
"Nor I," said Fowler.
"They would turn me back into a dog," said Towser.
"And me," said Fowler, "back into a man. — Clifford D. Simak

Time is still the great mystery to us. It is no more than a concept; we don't know if it even exists. — Clifford D. Simak

Look, Nathaniel. Men may not always be the way they are today. They may change. And, if they do, you have to carry on; you have to take the dream and keep it going. You'll have to pretend that you are men." "Us dogs," Nathaniel pledged, "will do it." "It won't come for thousands and thousands of years," said Grant. "You will have time to get ready. But you must know. You must pass the word along. You must not forget." "I know," said Nathaniel. "Us dogs will tell the pups and the pups will tell their pups." "That's — Clifford D. Simak

These are the stories the Dogs tell, when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. — Clifford D. Simak

Less than an hour before he'd congratulated himself on escaping all the traps of Earth, all the snares of Man. Not knowing that the greatest trap of all, the final and the fatal trap, lay on this present planet. — Clifford D. Simak

Delectable," Ulysses said. "Of all the drinks that I have drank on all the planets I have visited, the coffee is the best. — Clifford D. Simak

One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world's tomorrow, another world's today. And yesterday is tomorrow and tomorrow is the past. Except, there wasn't any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one's mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film that one could run backward and see what-once-had-been. — Clifford D. Simak

It was a place without a single feature of the space-time matrix that he knew. It was a place where nothing yet had happened - an utter emptiness. There was neither light nor dark: there was nothing here but emptiness. — Clifford D. Simak

Let's get going," Towser urged.
"Where do you want to go?"
"Anywhere," said Towser. "Just start going and see where we end up. I have a feeling ... well, a feeling-"
"Yes, I know," said Fowler.
For he had the feeling, too. The feeling of high destiny. A certain sense of greatness. A knowledge that somewhere off beyond the horizons lay adventure and things greater than adventure. — Clifford D. Simak

You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball - why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all you had done was the sweating and the bleeding. — Clifford D. Simak

fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship - a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family. Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it a man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack. It had led to terrible things, of course - to mob psychology, to racial persecution, to mass atrocities in the name of patriotism or religion. But likewise it had been the sizing that held the race together, the thing that from the very start had made human society possible. And — Clifford D. Simak

I trade with you my mind. — Clifford D. Simak

There was almost a fairy quality to this place, he thought. The far look and the clear air and the feeling of detachment that touched almost on greatness of the spirit. As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it. — Clifford D. Simak

I'm just a propagandist and a propagandist doesn't have to know what he is talking about, just so he talks about it most convincingly. — Clifford D. Simak

University politics," declared Oop, "doesn't care about liberal traditions or any other kind of traditions. — Clifford D. Simak

There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out of the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith- and, indeed, our hope- the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid. — Clifford D. Simak

What is a bow and arrow? It is the beginning of the end. It is the winding path that grows to the roaring road of war. It is a plaything and a weapon and a triumph in human engineering. It is the first faint stirring of an atom bomb. — Clifford D. Simak

For what need was there to go anywhere? It all was here. By simply twirling a dial one could talk face to face with anyone wished, could go, by sense, if not in body, anywhere one wished. Could attend the theater or hear a concert or browse in a library halfway around the world. Could transact any business one might need to transact without rising from one's chair. Webster — Clifford D. Simak

It's just a bow and arrow, but it's not a laughing matter. It might have been at one time, but history takes the laugh out of many things. If the arrow is a joke, so is the atom bomb, so is the sweep of disease laden dust that wipes out whole cities, so is the screaming rocket that arcs and falls then thousand miles away and kills a million people. — Clifford D. Simak

It seems to me, thinking of it, that there must be some universal plan which set in motion the orbiting of the electrons about the nucleus and the slower, more majestic orbit of the galaxies about one another to the very edge of space. — Clifford D. Simak

Could that have been what happened to the human race - a willing perversity that set at naught all human values which had been so hardly won and structured in the light of reason for a span of more than a million years? — Clifford D. Simak

For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person. — Clifford D. Simak

The chain of life runs smoothly from one generation to the next and none of the links stand out except here and there a link one sees by accident. — Clifford D. Simak

Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional. — Clifford D. Simak

But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices - the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered - the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation. — Clifford D. Simak

In this room, he told himself, history might have been written, the course of cosmic empire might have been shaped and the fate of stars decided.
But now there was no sign of life, just a brooding silence that seemed to whisper in a tongueless language of days and faces and problems long since wiped out by the march of years. — Clifford D. Simak

Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth . — Clifford D. Simak

If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology. — Clifford D. Simak

A yellow leaf fluttered down from overhead and settled in his lap, a clear, almost transparent yellow against the brownness of the robe. He moved to brush it off and then he let it stay. For who am I, he thought, to interfere with or dispute even such a simple thing as the falling of a leaf. He — Clifford D. Simak

Inside the time bubble we do not age. We age only when we are outside of it. — Clifford D. Simak

Squatted beside the fire, with the warmth of it upon his face and hands, he felt a smug contentment that seemed strangely out of place
the contentment of a man who had reduced his needs to the strictly basic
and with the contentment came a full-bodied confidence that was just as out of place. — Clifford D. Simak

I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man's average allotted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time , while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next. — Clifford D. Simak

We thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't, when we never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with it. — Clifford D. Simak

This is the very center of everything there is. A huge black hole eating up the galaxy. The end of everything. — Clifford D. Simak

Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven't got mob psychology anymore. You can't have mob psychology when people don't give a damn what happens to a thing that's dead already - a political system that broke down under its own weight. — Clifford D. Simak

Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it. He — Clifford D. Simak

Once there had been joy, but now there was only sadness, and it was not, he knew, alone the sadness of an empty house; it was the sadness of all else, the sadness of the Earth, the sadness of the failures and the empty triumphs. — Clifford D. Simak

It would seem to me that by the time a race has achieved deep space capability it would have matured to a point where it would have no thought of dominating another intelligent species. — Clifford D. Simak

I have tried at times to place humans in perspective against the vastness of universal time and space. I have been concerned with where we, as a race, may be going and what may be our purpose in the universal scheme - if we have a purpose. In general, I believe we do, and perhaps an important one. — Clifford D. Simak

Has it ever occurred to you that business as you think of it may have outlived its usefulness? Business has made its contribution and the world moves on. Business is just another dodo ... — Clifford D. Simak

My reluctance to use alien invasion is due to the feeling that we are not likely to be invaded and taken over. — Clifford D. Simak

The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship - a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family.
Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack.
It had led to terrible things, of course - to mob psychology, to racial persecution, to mass atrocities in the name of patriotism or religion. But likewise it had been the sizing that held the race together, the thing that from the very start had made human society possible.
And Joe didn't have it. Joe didn't give a damn. He didn't care what anyone thought of him. He didn't care whether anyone approved or not. — Clifford D. Simak

aimed not at military concentrations, but at total populations. He — Clifford D. Simak

It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. — Clifford D. Simak

He sat there thinking of Man's capacity for the wiping out of species
sometimes in hate or fear, at other times for the simple love of gain. — Clifford D. Simak

He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man. — Clifford D. Simak

These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story's done they ask many questions:
"What is Man?" they'll ask.
Or perhaps: "What is a city?"
Or: "What is a war? — Clifford D. Simak

With creation went responsibility and he was not equipped to assume more than the moral responsibility for the wrong that he had done, and moral responsibility, unless it might be coupled with the ability to bring about some mitigation, was an entirely useless thing. — Clifford D. Simak

Here, in this waiting room, one could see a cross section of them - the hoppers, the creepers, the crawlers, the wrigglers, and rollers that came from the many planets, from so many stars. Earth was the galactic melting pot, he thought, a place where beings from the thousand stars met and mingled to share their thoughts and cultures. — Clifford D. Simak

But the bars that held you, the bars that kept you in were the luxury and soft living. It is hard to walk out on a thing like that — Clifford D. Simak

The pendulum had swung too far, as always, and now was swinging back, and the horror of intolerance had been loosed upon the land. — Clifford D. Simak

That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself. — Clifford D. Simak

He stood and watched his friend hobble around the house, felt the cold claw of loneliness reach out and touch him with icy fingers. A terrible loneliness. The loneliness of age - of age and the outdated. — Clifford D. Simak

I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment. — Clifford D. Simak

Well," said Winslowe, moving over to plant himself behind the wheel, "it don't matter much what any of us are, just so we get along with one another. If some of the nations would only take a lesson from some small neighborhood like ours - a lesson in how to get along - the world would be a whole lot better. — Clifford D. Simak

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe. — Clifford D. Simak

And yet he had learned to submerge that sense of horror, to disregard the outward appearance of it, to regard all life as brother life, to meet all things as people. — Clifford D. Simak

Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning. — Clifford D. Simak

Jenkins tried to say goodbye, but he could not say goodbye. If he could only weep, he thought, but robots could not weep. — Clifford D. Simak

Much of what we see in the universe ... starts out as imaginary. Often you must imagine something before you can come to terms with it. — Clifford D. Simak

What do you mean by faith? Is faith enough for Man? Should he be satisfied with faith alone? Is there no way of finding out the truth? Is the attitude of faith, of believing in something for which there can be no more than philosophic proof, the true mark of a Christian? — Clifford D. Simak