Quotes of Note: A.E. van Vogt, "Mission: Interplanetary" I

 Quotes of Note from Mission: Interplanetary by A.E. van Vogt:

"There are at least two reasons why a territory becomes uninhabited. One is lack of food. The other is war." (p. 12)

"[T]he first step is a merciless questioning of all that was once held sacred." (p. 16)

"Space madness ... was a meaningless phrase... . The fact that men had gone insane in space from loneliness, fear, and tension did not make a special sickness of it." (p. 26)

"[T]he end result might well be death for people who had inflexible ways of dealing with unusual danger." (p. 37)

"[B]ehind the grosser aspects of any science there is an intricate tie-up with other sciences." (pp. 39-40)

"Nexialism is the science of joining in an orderly fashion the knowledge of one field of learning with that of other fields." (p. 46)

"I've been laboring for years under the delusion that mathematicians were scientists." (p. 48)

"[A] man who is right often enough gets a hearing in a crisis." (p. 50)

"[F]rom the beginning of time, the unthinking majority has paid the price of obeying without question the commands of leaders whose motivations they didn't trouble themselves to inquire into." (p. 59)

"[C]ivilizations ... seem to be born, grow older, and die of old age." (p. 60)

"[R]ight now we are making the mistakes that lead to decay." (p. 60)

"The outstanding common denominator of the 'winter' periods of civilization is the growing comprehension on the part of millions of individuals of how things work." (p. 60)

"For better or worse, the fight usually takes place within the framework of a legal system that tends to protect the entrenched minority." (p. 61)

"The human mind normally balanced innumerable opposing impulses so that the average individual might live his life span without letting one feeling gain important ascendance over the others." (p. 65)

"There's only one sure protection against hypnosis, and that is to be trained in it exactly the right way." (p. 70)

"Mind reading would stultify the development of any race... ." (p. 70)