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Ray Bradbury

Writer
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Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.
From The Halloween Tree
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
That's life for you," said MacDunn. "Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more.
From The Fog Horn
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Please, please, help me grow to be like them, the ones'll soon be here, who never grow old, can't die, that's what they say, can't die, no matter what, or maybe they died a long time ago but Cecy calls, and Mother and Father call, and Grandmere who only whispers, and now they're coming and I'm nothing, not like them who pass through walls and live in trees or live underneath until seventeen-year rains flood them up and out, and the ones who run in packs, let me be the one! If they live forever, why not me?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
A book is a loaded gun." - Fahrenheit 451
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
Don't they get afraid, then?"
"They have a religion for that.
From The October Country
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Everything that happens before Death is what counts.
From Something Wicked This Way Comes
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.
From The Illustrated Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
My wife says books aren’t ‘real.’ ”
“Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, ‘Hold on a moment.’ You play
God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when
you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an
environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten
down with reason.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I've got what amounts to a religion now. It's learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how to hear music and how to read a book. What does your civilization offer?
From The Martian Chronicles
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you can’t fight the meaninglessness with a religion, then slide along down the chute with it into oblivion. Make a religion of Meaninglessness.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness, Philosophical
Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.
From The Illustrated Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
From The October Country
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.
From The Halloween Tree
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
That's life for you," said MacDunn. "Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more.
From The Fog Horn
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Please, please, help me grow to be like them, the ones'll soon be here, who never grow old, can't die, that's what they say, can't die, no matter what, or maybe they died a long time ago but Cecy calls, and Mother and Father call, and Grandmere who only whispers, and now they're coming and I'm nothing, not like them who pass through walls and live in trees or live underneath until seventeen-year rains flood them up and out, and the ones who run in packs, let me be the one! If they live forever, why not me?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
A book is a loaded gun." - Fahrenheit 451
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
Don't they get afraid, then?"
"They have a religion for that.
From The October Country
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Everything that happens before Death is what counts.
From Something Wicked This Way Comes
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.
From The Illustrated Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
My wife says books aren’t ‘real.’ ”
“Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, ‘Hold on a moment.’ You play
God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when
you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an
environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten
down with reason.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I've got what amounts to a religion now. It's learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how to hear music and how to read a book. What does your civilization offer?
From The Martian Chronicles
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you can’t fight the meaninglessness with a religion, then slide along down the chute with it into oblivion. Make a religion of Meaninglessness.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness, Philosophical
Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.
From The Illustrated Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
From The October Country
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.
From The Halloween Tree
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
That's life for you," said MacDunn. "Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving some thing more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can't hurt you no more.
From The Fog Horn
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
Please, please, help me grow to be like them, the ones'll soon be here, who never grow old, can't die, that's what they say, can't die, no matter what, or maybe they died a long time ago but Cecy calls, and Mother and Father call, and Grandmere who only whispers, and now they're coming and I'm nothing, not like them who pass through walls and live in trees or live underneath until seventeen-year rains flood them up and out, and the ones who run in packs, let me be the one! If they live forever, why not me?
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
A book is a loaded gun." - Fahrenheit 451
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Education
If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Inspirational
Don't they get afraid, then?"
"They have a religion for that.
From The October Country
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Everything that happens before Death is what counts.
From Something Wicked This Way Comes
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.
From The Illustrated Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
My wife says books aren’t ‘real.’ ”
“Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, ‘Hold on a moment.’ You play
God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when
you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an
environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten
down with reason.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Television
I have something to fight for and live for; that makes me a better killer. I've got what amounts to a religion now. It's learning how to breathe all over again. And how to lie in the sun getting a tan, letting the sun work into you. And how to hear music and how to read a book. What does your civilization offer?
From The Martian Chronicles
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you can’t fight the meaninglessness with a religion, then slide along down the chute with it into oblivion. Make a religion of Meaninglessness.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Happiness, Philosophical
Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.
From Fahrenheit 451
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Life
I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.
From The Illustrated Man
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.
From The October Country
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Religion
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