Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires… — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
The wild black scavengers of the skies laid their eggs in season and lovingly fed their young. They soared high over prairies and mountains and plains, searching for the fulfillment of that share of life's destiny which was theirs according to the plan of Nature. Their philosophers demonstrated by unaided 15 Animals reason alone that the Supreme Cathartes aura regnans… — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share
…to abuse the intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
The trouble with being a priest was that you eventually had to take the advice you gave to others. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
The captain looked defensive. "You regard our customs as primitive?"Every society to its own tastes, captain. The wisdom of one society would be folly… — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification in our 'police action' in space? How can we know? Certainly there was no justification… — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share
That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
It is said that water is for cattle and farmers, that milk is for children and blood for men. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think- as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it… — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
One should be embarrassed to speak of God in the third person. — Walter M. Miller, Jr Copy Share Image
