Hugo Gernsback's Quotes

Let it be understood, in the first place, that a science fiction story must be an exposition of a scientific theme and it must be also a story.

What description of clouds and sunsets was to the old novelist, description of scientific apparatus and methods is to the modern Scientific Detective writer.

I cannot think that we are useless or God would not have created us. There is one God looking down on us all. We are all the children of one God. The sun, the darkness, the winds are all listening to what we have to say.

I was no chief and never had been, but because I had been more deeply wronged than others, this honor was conferred upon me, and I resolved to prove worthy of the trust.

While living I want to live well.

I was warmed by the sun, rocked by the winds and sheltered by the trees as other Indian babes. I was living peaceably when people began to speak bad of me. Now I can eat well, sleep well and be glad. I can go everywhere with a good feeling.

The soldiers never explained to the government when an Indian was wronged, but reported the misdeeds of the Indians.

I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.

All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing.

Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.

The real drawback to the simple life is that it is not simple. If you are living it, you positively can do nothing else. There is not time.

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.

Conventional manners are a kind of literacy test for the alien who comes among us.

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

Social distinctions concern themselves ultimately with whom you may and may not marry.

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them.

One of the reasons, surely, why women have been credited with less perfect veracity than men is that the burden of conventional falsehood falls chiefly on them.

There is no morality by instinct. There is no social salvation in the end without taking thought; without mastery of logic and application of logic to human experience.

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.

The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method.

It is a poor cause which has to be lied for regularly.

No fashion has ever been created expressly for the lean purse or for the fat woman: the dressmaker's ideal is the thin millionaires.