Walter M. Miller, Jr. famous quotes

03-26-2025

When Holy Church occasionally hinted that she still considered her authority to be supreme over all nations and superior to the authority of states, men in these times tended to snicker.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Men #Church #Snickers
Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Powerful #Doubt #Denial
When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Evil #Doe #Tire
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.

#Men #Infinite #Wells
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 of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, Americaâ€”burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Fall #Swings #Egypt
Bless me Father, I ate a lizard.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Father #Lizards #Bless
One should be embarrassed to speak of God in the third person.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Speak #Should #Third Person
Speak up, destiny, speak up! Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it's not decades away; it's right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Destiny #Speak #Instant
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 for another. Who is qualified to judge? Only the universe, which passes the judgment of survival on all peoples.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Judging #Survival #Would Be
Fire, loveliest of the four elements of the world, and yet an element too in Hell. While it burned adoringly in the core of the Temple, it had also scorched the life from a city, this night, and spewed its venom over the land. How strange of God to speak from a burning bush, and of Man to make a symbol of Heaven into a symbol of Hell.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Night #Men #Land
Soon the sun will set'- is that prophecy? No, it's merely an assertion of faith in the consistency of events.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Consistency #Sun #Events
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 has a pleasanter taste.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Men #Thinking #Errors
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 for what they did-or was there? We only know what that thing says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease it's government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference?
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Hate #Patriotic #Government
That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Past #Sin #Fats
It is said that water is for cattle and farmers, that milk is for children and blood for men.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Children #Men #Blood
The trouble with being a priest was that you eventually had to take the advice you gave to others.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Advice #Trouble #Priests
Listen, my dear Cors, why don't you forgive God for allowing pain? If He didn't allow it, human courage, bravery, nobility, and self-sacrifice would all be meaningless things.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Pain #Sacrifice #Self
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of lawâ€”a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Law #Opposites #Suffering
Ask for an omen, then stone it when it comes -- de essentia hominum.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Stones #Omen
....Nature imposes nothing on you that Nature doesn't prepare you to bear.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Bears
....to abuse the intellect for reasons of pride, vanity, or escape from responsibility, is the fruit of that same tree.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Responsibility #Pride #Vanity
... for no change comes calmly over the world...
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#World
I'm not so sure he's mad, Father. Just a little devious in his sanity.
-- Walter M. Miller, Jr.

#Father #Mad #Littles

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