Science Fiction Quotes

• For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

  Gene Roddenberry

  Thinking, People, Important

  23 Copy quote

• Science fiction seldom attempts to predict the future. More often than not, it tries to prevent the future.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Trying, Fiction

  3 Copy quote

• One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of the mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Pain, Future, Science

  "The Making of Kubrick's 2001". Book by Jerome Agel, 1970.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and say to myself "well, that's not going to happen

  Rita Rudner

  Hilarious, Cooking, Kitchen

  24 Copy quote

• Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.

  Ray Bradbury

  Fun, Talking, Civilization

  Brown Daily Herald, March 24, 1995.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

  Frank Herbert

  Life, Real, Princess

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.323, Penguin

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Writing, Technology, Fiction

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.169, Grove Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together.

  Ray Bradbury

  Believe, Two, Together

  0 Copy quote

• I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

  Frank Herbert

  Inspirational, Motivational, Death

  Frank Herbert (2010). “Heretics Of Dune: The Fifth Dune Novel”, p.10, Hachette UK

  88 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

  Ray Bradbury

  Art, Writing, Ideas

  Ray Bradbury, Sam Weller (2012). “Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews”, p.284, Melville House

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

  Rutger Hauer

  Movie, Believe, People

  9 Copy quote

• Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

  J. G. Ballard

  Reality, Sprung Up, Fiction

  "Fictions of Every Kind" (1971)

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Political, Fiction

  "The Making of Kubrick's 2001". Book by Jerome Agel, 1970.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.

  Philip K. Dick

  Sorry, Writing, Fiction

  Philip K. Dick (1985). “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon”, Doubleday Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Science, Fiction

  "Against Interpretation and Other Essays" by Susan Sontag, (p. 212), 1966.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Science, Fiction

  1975 'How Easy To See The Future', in Natural History, Apr.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In sci-fi convention, life-forms that hadn't developed space travel were mere prehistory -- horse-shoe crabs of the cosmic scene -- and something of the humiliation of being stuck on a provincial planet in a galactic backwater has stayed with me ever since.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Horse, Shoes, Space

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.

  Doris Lessing

  Time, Space, Fiction

  The Guardian (London), November 7, 1988.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post Gothic mode.

  Brian Aldiss

  Confused, Fiction, Definitions

  Brian Wilson Aldiss (1995). “The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy”, p.72, Syracuse University Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Essence, Fiction Stories

  "My Own View". "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction". Book edited by Robert Holdstock, 1978.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.

  Joan Didion

  Children, Order, Definitions

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 28, 2011

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction.

  Steven Wright

  Death, Fun, Science

  4 Copy quote

• To almost no one's surprise, Astrid said, "Dune, by Frank Herbert. 'I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Fear has gone there will be nothing.'" She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. "'Only I will remain.

  Michael Grant

  Fear, Eye, Past

  65 Copy quote

• The real universe is always one step beyond logic.

  Frank Herbert

  Real, Steps, Logic

  Frank Herbert (2003). “Dune”, p.323, Penguin

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Science, Technology, Possible And Impossible

  Letter to the editor, Science, 19 Jan. 1968.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source