Arkady Strugatsky

We don't notice things change. We know that things change, we've been told since childhood that things change, we've witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we're still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes--or we search for change in all the wrong places.

And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can__ do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can__ stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere_ an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers_ and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people_ from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: an era in which grayness fights its last battles with a brutality that takes humanity back to the middle ages, loses these battles, and forever disappears as an actual force.

Twenty times better to err on the person than suspicious of everyone.

The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense.

How can I give up stalking when I have a family to feed? Get a job? I don't want to work for you, your work makes me puke, do you understand? This is the way I figure it: if a man works with you, he is always working for one of you, he is a slave and nothing else. And I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair.

_ в_егда б_д__ ко_оли, более или менее же__окие, ба_он_, более или менее дикие, и в_егда б_де_ невеже__венн_й на_од, пи_а__ий во__и_ение к _воим _гне_а_ел_м и ненави___ к _воем_ о_вободи_ел_. _ в_е по_ом_, __о _аб го_аздо л___е понимае_ _воего го_подина, п____ даже _амого же__окого, _ем _воего о_вободи_ел_, ибо кажд_й _аб о_ли_но п_ед__авл_е_ _еб_ на ме__е го_подина, но мало к_о п_ед__авл_е_ _еб_ на ме__е бе_ко____ного о_вободи_ел_.

You should have long since gotten rid of military-industrial complexes.

I am positive that in the vast majority of cases we are hammering nails with microscopes.

I was told that this road would take me to the ocean of death, and turned back halfway. Since then crooked, round-about, godforsaken paths stretch out before me.

Dye a specsuit any color other than the original red, and any stalker would put down five hundred for it without batting an eyelash___t__ light, comfortable, not too tight, and you don__ sweat in it from the heat. You can go right through a fire in this thing, and no gas will penetrate it. It__ even bulletproof, they say. Of course, fire toxic gas, and bullets -these are only Earth perils. The Zone doesn't have those; in the Zone you have other worries.

In some sense, we__e all cavemen__e can__ imagine anything more frightening than a ghost or a vampire. But the violation of the principle of causality__hat__ actually much scarier than a whole herd of ghosts_ or Rubinstein__ monsters_ or is that Wallenstein?___rankenstein.

Intelligence is the ability to harness the powers of the surrounding world without destroying the said world