Ray Bradbury Quotes
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It doesn't matter what you do, he said, 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. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.
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The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool.
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Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.
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Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!
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They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale.
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I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.
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The Lord is not serious. In fact, it is a little hard to know just what else He is except loving. And love has to do with humor, doesn't it? For you cannot love someone unless you put up with him, can you? And you cannot put up with someone constantly unless you can laugh at him. Isn't that true? And certainly we are rediculous little animals wallowing in the fudge bowl, and God must love us all the more because we appeal to his humor.
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I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!
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It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book... it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt.
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When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.
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A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know.
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Life is about trying things to see if they work.
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But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.
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I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.
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We were put here as witnesses to the miracle of life. We see the stars, and we want them. We are beholden to give back to the universe. If we make landfall on another star system, we become immortal.
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Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
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Science and religion have to go hand in hand with the mystery, because there's a certain point beyond which you say, "There are no answers."
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Ideas result from the collision of metaphors inside the head.
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My business is to prevent the future.
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It was in their friendship they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow.
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I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.
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Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.
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"Oh, ancient god, whatever your name," whispered Ahmed. "Help this lost son of a good father, this evil boy who meant no harm but slept in school, ran errands slowly, did not pray from his heart, ignored his mother, and did not hold his family in great esteem. For all this I know I must suffer. But here in the midst of silence, at the desert's heart, where even the wind knows not my name? Must I die so young? Am I to be forgotten without having been?"
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I believe the universe created us - we are an audience for miracles. In that sense, I guess, I'm religious.