Luther, modernin ihmisen edeltäjä, oli kaikin tavoin epätasapainoinen: hänessä oli sekä Hitler että Pascal.

E.M. Cioran(1911-1995): Katkeruuden syllogismeja(2004; Syllogisme de l´amertune, 1952, 1980), sivu 15.

The first thing that stand out in this period[c.700-c.1050 AD] is the inferiority of western Europe to its Greek and Moslem neighbours... The West was the poor relation of Byzantium, making, after the manner of poor relations, strident claims to a superiority which were derisory by any objective test. Similarly with Islam.

R.W. Southern(1912-2001): Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages(1978[1970]), sivu 27.

- Aih! Aih! Miksi sinä lyöt minua? huusi Trurl kyyristellen.
- Se tuottaa minulle iloa, vastasi Klapausius sorkkarautaansa heiluttaen.
- Voisit itsekin joskus kokeilla sitä.
Ja hän iski Trurlia päähän niin että se kumahti kuin rumpu.

Stanislaw Lem(1921-):Kyberias(1986; Cyberiada, 1965), sivu 26.

Lucky Strike toteutti 1930-luvulla menestyksekkään mainoskampanjan, joka yhdisti tupakoimisen laihtumiseen:"Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet!" (ota Lucky, älä karamellia!)

Douglas Kellner(1943-): Mediakulttuuri(1998; Media Culture. Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern, 1995), sivu 285.

By 1995, and especially owing to the Enola Gay fracas, the words "interpretation", "reinterpretation" and "revisionism" had become tainted in the [American] public mind - mysterious activities that museums and historians undertake that must surely be manipulative, perverse, and highly subjective. Revisionism sounded suspiciously and unreliably Marxist...

Michael Kammen(1936-): American Culture, American Tastes. Social Change and the 20th Century(1999), sivu 237.

...William Dean Howell´s observation that "What the American public always wants is  tragedy with a happy ending." 


Michael Kammen(1936-): American Culture, American Tastes. Social Change and the 20th Century(1999), sivu 225.

On arvioitu, että vuosina 1939-41 tuotetuista 1102
amerikkalaisesta näytelmäelokuvasta vain 6,8%
käsitteli Euroopassa käytävää sotaa, ja silloinkin
oli usein kyse ensimmäisestä maailmansodasta.

Kari Kallioniemi&Hannu Salmi:Porvariskodista maailmankylään.
Populaarikulttuurin historiaa(1995), sivu 117.

"Barrett does not accept responsibility for his actions. He hides behind his position in the company, and his position in the company is all he is. In the camp, there were many like him, people who told themselves that they must do terrible things to the prisoners because their superiors demanded it, people who refused to see that they were doing these things out of fear and denial. Those people, they made themselves monsters, and I think Barrett is that kind of monster. He will commit murder rather than risk doing something that might endanger his status, and he will tell himself it is for the good of the company." 


Paul J. McAuley(1955-): The Passenger(2002), teoksessa Gardner Dozois(1947-)(toim.):The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction. 16 Annual Collection(2003), sivu 89.

With magic, you can turn frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D and you still have the frog you started with.

Terry Pratchett(1948-)&Ian Stewart(1945-)&Jack Cohen(1933-):The Science of Discworld(2002), sivut 10-11.

...maailmaa ei pelasta enää
sen enempi kasvu kuin armokaan.

Pekka Kejonen(1941-): Walkman, minä se olen. Runoja(2004), sivu 51.

Raha haisee vain valmistusvaiheessa.

Pekka Kejonen(1941-): Walkman, minä se olen. Runoja(2004), sivu 51.

Visionaries are apt to speak in strange tongues, difficult to interpret; a striking common feature of many - though mercifully not all - of the great founding figures of planning is their incoherence. Their primitive disciples, all too anxious to undertake the task, may create a gospel at variance with the original texts... The cultural and social world they inhabited, which provided the essential material for their perceptions, has long since vanished and is difficult to reconstruct: the past is a foreign country, with a different language, different social mores, and a different view of the human condition.

Peter Hall(1932-): Cities of Tomorrow. An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. Updated Edition(2001), sivu 4.

To spend millions of dollars to live suspended in  midair above fire-prone vegetation on soil with only the most tenuous commintment to remaining in place, all within a few dozen miles of the San  Andreas Fault, would seem to make no sense at all... The sight of such a landscape each time you step out your front door is a reminder what it means to  be alive - even if that reminder ultimately kills you... They presumably have at least some inkling of the attendant dangers, though it is surprisingly easy to forget the quakes and the fires and the mud while gazing out on the intoxicating blue of the Pacific. Why do they do it? They put themselves and their families at risk for the simple reason that they want to be close to nature.

William Cronon(1954-)(ed.):Uncommon Ground. Rethinking the Human Place in Nature(1996), sivut 31-32.

During [proto mass culture], taste was heavily determined by means of finite resources, whereas  the ethos of possession in [mass culture] made it commonplace to own more than one actually  needed as well as more than one could afford.

Michael Kammen(1936-): American Culture, American Tastes.  Social Change and the 20th Century(1999), sivu 49.

Now we say that everything Lenin taught us of communism was false, and everything he taught us of capitalism, true.

William Gibson(1948-):Pattern recognition(2003), sivu 303.

Ihmisen ikä on tuskin sataa vuotta,
kaiken aikaa hän silti tuntee
tuhannen vuoden huolet.

Pertti Nieminen(1929-): Sinusta erossa. Kiinalaisia kansanlauluja kahdentuhannen vuoden takaa(1984), sivu 42. Katkelma runosta Läntinen portti.

The fact that one can reduce whole genres of fiction to fairly simple formulas seems to most literary critics to be a blanket certificate of worthlessness.

Brian Stableford(1948-): The Way to Write Science Fiction(1989), sivu 67.

Erikoistumattomuutta kutsutaan usein alkeellisuudeksi.

Juha Valste(1945-): Apinasta ihmiseksi(2004), sivu 23.

Indeed, the attempt to foist upon people who are supposedly living two hundred tears from now the foibles, verbal habits and moral outlooks of the present day is rather absurd. There are no characters in fiction who seem more ridiculous to us than the ones which writers of the nineteenth century invented to populate their visions of our times.

Brian Stableford(1948-):The Way to Write Science Fiction(1989), sivu 61.

Knowing what someone is like is a matter of knowing how they relate to their environment; we can quickly get a sense of the particular personality of a fictitious character if we can observe his or her idiosyncratic response to a situation which we already understand in terms of norms and customs.

Brian Stableford(1948-): The Way to Write Science Fiction(1989, sivu 60.