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Mark Clifton Zitate

Mark Clifton war ein US-amerikanischer Science-Fiction-Schriftsteller und Geschäftsmann.

Die meisten seiner Geschichten gehören entweder der „Bossy“-Serie oder der „Ralph Kennedy“-Serie an. Sein größter Erfolg war die Auszeichnung seines Romans Computer der Unsterblichkeit mit dem Hugo im Jahre 1955.

Bis circa 1950 arbeitete Clifton als Psychologe im Personalwesen und war mit der statistischen Auswertung von über 200.000 Fragebögen befasst. Die dabei gewonnenen Einsichten wirkten sich auch in seinen literarischen Arbeiten aus. Barry N. Malzberg schrieb in der Einleitung von The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton:



2010 wurde er postum mit dem Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award ausgezeichnet. Wikipedia  

✵ 1906 – 1963
Mark Clifton: 23 Zitate0 Gefällt mir

Mark Clifton: Zitate auf Englisch

“There had been many times when man had been forced to adopt the only right opinion. Each time man’s forward thrust had slackened, vegetated, and died. Once, through the dark ages, the period had lasted almost a thousand years.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 19.

“Everyone recognized that only five percent of all the people born ever amount to anything at all. Everyone humbly thanked his providential stars that through his own personal efforts and merit he had become one of the superior five percent. Everyone looked with pity and contempt upon the ninety-five percent who did not share his grace.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 175.

“Instant acceptance of an idea is as self-defeating as instant rejection.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 163.

“The public wants miracles. The public demands miracles; and if one source ceases to provide them, they will turn to another source which seems to accomplish the spectacular. Even while they resented and opposed the scientific attitude, they lapped up the miracles which this attitude accomplished with glee.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 76-77.

““There’s only one way to guard a secret so effectively that no one can misuse it to his own advantage and the detriment of others,” Kennedy mused slowly, “And that’s to give it away—make it open knowledge. Give it to everybody.”
“Scientists have known that for a long time,” Hoskins said, “That’s why we keep insisting on free trade of ideas.””

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 180.

“Truth frightens man. He plants illusion in the debris of his mind to hide him from the clean white light she brings. His arguments defeat her wisdom. In his preconceptions and prejudices he dictates, in advance, what form she must take, what garments she must wear; and because of this he often does not recognize her when they meet. His illusion drives her from him.
And yet he still yearns and seeks for truth.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 187.

“Think back through all the eras of history—the major ones, the tiny obscure ones known only to scholars. Can you think of a man, ever, who was capable of fashioning the future development of mankind to suit his own idea of it—no matter how noble that ideal may have been? Wouldn’t that be just another form of opinion control—no matter how splendid the conception?”
Kennedy did not turn around.
“It takes a great deal of faith in mankind to keep from directing it the way we think it should go,” he said at last.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 92.

“A human being is seldom bothered with insufficient data; often the less he has the more willing he is to give a firm opinion; and man prefers some answer, even a wrong one, to the requirement that he dig deeper and find out the facts.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 49.

“He quickly lowered his eyes to his knees again, to conceal the pain in them, to conceal his broken faith in the innate goodness of men, the profound despair of realization that reason might not after all triumph over ignorance.
“Perhaps,” he murmured aloud, “To believe in the inevitable triumph of rationality might, in itself, be no more than another expression of those same superstitions which we deplore in the ignorant. It is apparently an occupational disease, perhaps a fatal one, for the scientist to be too sanguine about eventual rule by reason. There is so little evidence…””

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 16.

“In either event he could only adhere to the letter of the law, but then for every yea in the law there was a nay, and it always boiled down to simple expediency. Like a psychiatric diagnosis, it could always be juggled around to fit anything you chose.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 79.

“That kind of therapy, the use of force to make a man give up his convictions, has been tried since the dawn of history. I think we should have learned by now that it won’t work.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 130.

“People will tie in with a fanatic if for no other reason than to break the monotony of their lives.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 176.

“The universe does not care whether man unlocks its secrets or leaves them closed. Water does not care whether man bathes in it or drowns in it; whether it waters his fields or washes them away. If man masters its laws and utilizes his knowledge, water becomes a force in his favor. But enemy or servant, water does not care.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 48.

“At this stage of man’s evolution, our scientists have been like little children facing a table piled high with the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One piece is picked up and its holder says, “This is the important piece. I hold the one key to everything in my hands.” Well, of course, he does. Because every piece is a key piece.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 177.

“It (objection to a machine that could think) was the hook used by the rabble rousers, whose monopoly of moral interpretation might be challenged.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 18.

“The suppressed hunger to think was like an epidemic.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 17.

“Logical rationality is neither subversive nor nonsubversive. It is simply a statement of fact.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 17-18.

“Early in his career Hoskins had realized that no field of science is remote from the affairs of men, that there is a sociological implication inherent even in the simple set of screwing a nut on a bolt.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 29-30.

“To say that man has already achieved the ultimate and absolute truth is like a tribal taboo which says that a given river may never be crossed because the witch doctor proves beyond all reason that there is only chaos beyond.
The most puzzling of all contradictory concepts given me is the human will to set up such arbitrary limits to his comprehension.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 109.

“He was not psychotic enough to set himself up as a chosen arbiter of mores and laws.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 122.

“Water does not care whether you bathe in it or drown in it. The mountains do not care whether you climb them or go around them. The stars do not care whether man reaches them or not. The universe does not care whether man masters all the relationships of its forces and processes, or dies because he refuses to master them. Life continues as it uses those relationships to further its growth. It ceases when it becomes overcome by still other forces which it cannot master.”

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Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 188.

“It’s pretty human to smash the guy or the thing which tries to tell us something we don’t want to hear.”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 179.

“Think back through all the eras of history—the major ones, the tiny obscure ones known only to scholars. Can you think of a man, ever, who was capable of fashioning the future development of mankind to suit his own idea of it—no matter how noble that ideal may have been? Wouldn’t that be just another form of opinion control—no matter how splendid the conception?”

Help us translate this quote

Mark Clifton buch They'd Rather Be Right

Kennedy did not turn around.
“It takes a great deal of faith in mankind to keep from directing it the way we think it should go,” he said at last.
Quelle: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 92.

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