Olaf Stapledon

No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing,…

— Olaf Stapledon

In fact man's career has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great sluggish river, broken…

— Olaf Stapledon

I loathe the urchin's cruelty to the cat, but I will not loathe the urchin. I loathe Hitler's mass-torturing, but not Hitler;…

— Olaf Stapledon

“We are bound to hurt one another so much, again and again. we are so terribly different.''Yes,' he said, 'But the more…

— Olaf Stapledon

Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived…

— Olaf Stapledon

Without Satan, with God only, how poor a universe, how trite a music!

— Olaf Stapledon

I see, indeed I know, that in some sense God is love, and God is wisdom, and God is creative action, yes…

— Olaf Stapledon

“With characteristic lack of false modesty, John once said to me, "My looks are a rough test of people. If they don't…

— Olaf Stapledon

[S]ervants of darkness had no lasting joy in their service. In all of them the will for darkness was a perversion of…

— Olaf Stapledon

“The truth of the matter was something much more subtle and tremendous than any plain physical miracle could ever be. But never…

— Olaf Stapledon

Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh,…

— Olaf Stapledon

The Tibetan missionaries in their mood of bright confidence disconcerted the imperial governments by laughing the new movement into frustration. For a…

— Olaf Stapledon

“For the former, activity, any kind of activity, was an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but a progress toward…

— Olaf Stapledon

We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be…

— Olaf Stapledon

“In the tide of these wild thoughts we checked our fancy, remembering that only on the rare grains called planets can life…

— Olaf Stapledon

A nation . . . is just a society for hating foreigners.

— Olaf Stapledon

“Very soon the heavens presented an extraordinary appearance, for all the stars directly behind me were now deep red, while those directly…

— Olaf Stapledon

So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors æons…

— Olaf Stapledon

“Had God,then,peopled the whole universe with our kind?Did he perhaps in very truth make us in his image?It was incredible.To ask such…

— Olaf Stapledon

“Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in…

— Olaf Stapledon

He should avail himself of their resources in such ways as to advance the expression of the spirit in the life of…

— Olaf Stapledon

It seemed to me that I, the spirit of so many worlds, the flower of so many ages, was the Church Cosmical,…

— Olaf Stapledon

My dear, it is a great strength to have faced the worst and to have *felt* it a feature of beauty. Nothing…

— Olaf Stapledon

The one reasonable goal of social life was affirmed to be the creation of a world of awakened, of sensitive, intelligent, and…

— Olaf Stapledon

“In temperament the Second Men were curiously different from the earlier species. The same factors were present, but in different proportions, and…

— Olaf Stapledon