Damon Knight

Damon Knight (September 19, 1922 – April 15, 2002) was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan.

Quotes

• Science fiction … means what we point to when we say it.
  • In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction. Advent Publishers. 1956. pp. page 1. ISBN 0911682074. 

• "It's a cookbook!"
  • "To Serve Man", 1951

Short fiction

• When two alien cultures meet, the stronger must transform the weaker with love or hate.
  • Stranger Station, in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec. 1956, p. 17

A for Anything (1959)

Original title: The People Maker. Page numbers from the first Avon printing, February 1980

• He was going to die. His mind flinched back in horror from that, but it was still there, grinning, implacable. His body would rot under the ground, while delicious things were still happening in the sunlight.
  • Chapter 6 (p. 66)

• “Don’t lose your temper,” said Ruell evenly. “It’s your worst fault, except for ignorance.”
  • Chapter 7 (p. 88)

• We humanitarians, as our name suggests, believe that man has an ethical duty to man. We believe that the value of any system is measured by the consideration given to all human beings, not just to a favored class: and by that standard, our present system is a miserable failure.
  • Chapter 10 (p. 120)

• No progress, either moral or material, can be made in a world which is frozen, like ours, into a rigid mold of suppression of liberties.
  • Chapter 10 (p. 120)

• Voluntary birth control methods only work on the people who choose to use ’em. A population check that doesn’t work on everybody doesn’t work at all, because it simply breeds out the ones who use it. The only population check that really works is one that affects everybody, like a limit of space or food.
  • Chapter 10 (p. 122)

• Eagles had made a realist of him. He believed in facts, and in altering your viewpoint to fit them, no matter what they were. That was the way you survived and stayed sane; it was hard, it meant sacrifices—he had already lost many things that he valued deeply—but it was the only way.
  • Chapter 18 (p. 186)

• A society that put more emphasis on birth than ability was likely to breed ability out of its ruling class.
  • Chapter 19 (p. 190)

External links

• Damon Knight on IMDb