Walter M. Miller Jr Quotes (14 Quotes)

Insofar as thought could be governed at all, it could only be commanded to follow what reason affirmed anyhow; command it otherwise and it would not obey.

It is said that water is for cattle and farmers, that milk is for children and blood for men.

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.

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.

Probing the womb of the future is bad for the child.

Soon the sun will set'- is that prophecy? No, it's merely an assertion of faith in the consistency of events.

The trouble with being a priest was that you eventually had to take the advice you gave to others.

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 law-a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

You don't have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.

Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.

But you've always used words so wordily in crafty defense of your Trinity, although He never needed such defense before you got Him from me as a Unity.

Dom Paulo had not expected to convince him. But it was with a heavy heart that the abbot noticed the plodding patience with which the thon heard him through; it was the patience of a man listening to an argument which he had long ago refuted to his own satisfaction.

For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age . . .

I'm not so sure he's mad, Father. Just a little devious in his sanity.