Fantastic Voyage Quotes
"He who is needed must learn to endure flattery." - Dezhnev Senior
"Pardon me. Do you speak Russian?" said the low voice, definitely contralto, in his ear.
"Because that would make it easier. My English sometimes fails me."
"I need you badly. Are you listening to this talk? You did not seem to be."
"It didn't matter, Morrison decided afterward, that he had been in that particular room -- that he had not been alert -- that he had been intrigued enough, flattered enough to be willing to go with a woman who said she needed him."
"That you are not successful? That your methods of brain wave analysis are not generally accepted in the field?"
"Because we have a neurophysicist in our country who knows your work, and he thinks it is brilliant."
"Brilliantly wrong? How is that different from wrong?"
"It is his view that it is impossible to be brilliantly wrong without being not altogether wrong."
"Why are you so certain miniaturization is impossible?"
"If you reduce a man to the dimensions of a fly, then all the mass of a man would be crowded into the volume of a fly. You'd end up with a density of something like -- a hundred and fifty thousand times that of platinum."
"But what if the mass were reduced in proportion?"
"Then you end up with one atom in the miniaturized man for every three million in the original."
"If it is miniaturized atoms you are speaking of, then Planck's constant, which is an absolutely fundamental quantity in our Universe, forbids it."
"And if I told you that Planck's constant was reduced as well, so that a miniaturized man would be encased in a field in which the graininess of the Universe was incredibly finer than it is under normal conditions?"
"You cannot really prove your theories because you cannot study single nerve cells in sufficient detail without damaging them."
"But what if we make a neuron as large as the Kremlin for you -- or even larger -- so that you can study it a molecule at a time?"
"No," he said in half a whisper. "Are you insane? Do you think I am insane? Good-bye! Good-bye!"
"If asking politely is useless, take." - Dezhnev Senior
"I am not a recluse. I am not a derelict. I will be missed."
"Each of us is firmly convinced that no one else is far ahead on a road of its own."
"There are all kinds of bravery and perhaps every one of those kinds of bravery is a mark of insanity or, at any rate, folly."
"I? Brave? Lady, lady, what do you know about me?"
"A pawn is the most important piece on the chessboard -- to a pawn."
"My father always said, 'What counts is the person, not the name.'"
"No, Dr. Boranova, since I don't know where I'm going or what I'm doing, I'm not ready. However, if you will lead the way, I will follow."
"That is sufficiently ready. -- This way, then. There is someone else you must meet."
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It is the transition that is troublesome."
"Not just a rabbit, Doctor. She is a most unusual creature. Unique. She has made history to a far greater extent than has the catalog of war and disaster that usually is thought of by that name."
"If we exclude such purely incidental creatures as worms, fleas, and submicroscopic parasites, Katinka is the first living creature that has been miniaturized."
"The body knows what it needs. That's why some things taste good."
"Trust must begin somewhere or the fragile mood of cooperation we have enjoyed for so long will shatter and we will be back to the twentieth century with all its horrors."
"Planck's constant sets a lower limit to the size of energy transfer and the speed of light sets an upper limit to the speed of information transmission."
"We are always certain that the decision we have just made is wrong."
"No voyage is dangerous to the one who waves goodbye from the shore."
"All through history, scientists have risked death to continue their investigations."
"Let's be honest with each other, Albert. We couldn't hide your share in this, even if we wished to."
"If we do not hazard our lives, the chances of obtaining anything at all are zero -- flat zero."
"All achievement in life requires the overcoming of fear."
"I am so sorry, Albert, but that is the wrong answer. We will not accept it."
"The laws against sabotage are excessively severe in the Soviet Union."
"We have to save space, you know. What can I tell you?"
"No one could possibly have guessed that when the time came to carry out the first such microvoyage, the subject would not only be a human body but Shapirov himself."
"My dear Albert. You recognize objects by reflected light, a dog recognizes objects by emitted odor, a molecule recognizes objects by surface electromagnetic pattern. If we're going to make our way as a miniaturized object among molecules, we must have the proper patterns in order to be treated as friends rather than foes."
"Don't be foolish. We are not heroes of Soviet science and the one you speak of certainly isn't. We are human beings and scientists and, in fact, if there were any discomfort that we felt, we would be compelled to describe it in full detail, since it might be that with modifications of the process we could remove that discomfort and make future miniaturizations less difficult. Hiding any part of the truth would be unscientific, unethical, and dangerous."
"On the contrary," said Kaliinin. "It was an act of kindness. Would you have entered the ship as freely and as easily as you did if you had suspected that we would be miniaturized? Would you have inspected the ship as coolly if you had known? And if you had been anticipating miniaturization, would you not have developed psychogenic symptoms of all sorts?"
"The greatest difficulty comes at the start. It's called 'getting ready.'"
"As my father used to say, 'The truly wise trapeze artist does not inspect his nails in mid-jump.'"
"If the current flow is taking you where you want to go, don't argue."
"Everything is working properly, as far as I can see."
"We have so little mass now that it takes much less energy to miniaturize further."
"If you find a gold key without a lock, don't throw it away. The gold is also sufficient."
"Since we all must die, what better can we ask for than a quick and sudden death?"
"No knife could be honed as sharp as a woman's tongue."
"We don't want to get stuck in the pipe by being too fat."
"We have been dosed with the same chemical that cosmonauts use against space sickness."
"If you want to know whether water is boiling, don't test it by hand."
"To want peace and quiet above all else is to hope for death."
"Let them pour. I wish them the joy of the attempt."
"It is only when a child has learned to hold still that it can be considered a creature of sense."
"Only simpletons go to fortune-tellers. Who else would be in such a hurry to hear bad news?"
"Of all the stupid, incompetent, maddening situations."
"We're all in this together. In here, we are neither Soviets nor Americans; we are human beings trying to survive and to accomplish a great task."
"It's well-known that Soviet spacesuits are the best in the world and the Japanese are second."
"That a loss of memory might be an early sign of brain damage."
"It is not easy to cool an object in an isothermal medium."
"People are ready enough to laugh at you. Don't make funny faces in order to encourage them."
"The most efficient way of accepting the foolish dogmas foisted on us by social orthodoxy is to refrain from thinking."
"The time for offense is when a man, once he has cooled down, repeats an insult he has offered in his rage."
"In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate."
"There are no secrets in science, or there should be none."
"Tension tends to increase urgency, I have frequently found."
"The wall that says 'Welcome, stranger' has never been built."
"It is my opinion that I am absolutely certain. The trouble is that my opinion isn't always right."
"The sure thing about anything that goes without saying is that someone is bound to say it."
"There's no drink like pure water, provided one realizes that it is alcohol that is the purifying agent."
"Those who say 'A penny for your thoughts' are usually being overgenerous."
"The most exciting part of any trip is reaching home again."
"What a shame to be the first people inside the most complex of all living cells and to do nothing at all about investigating it properly."
"Curiosity. Well, it's not exactly an image of anything. Just an impression. I feel curiosity."
"As my father used to say: 'The longer it takes to get to a point, the blunter it turns out to be.'"
"We're in a group of cells -- a million of them or more -- that are a center of creative thought."
"Any reasonable human being would realize that Shapirov cannot be thinking in normal fashion."
"A task like this should be performed voluntarily and not under duress."
"There's no duress like one's own conscience and it is that which makes life so needlessly bitter."
"We cannot choose this one or that one according to whim. It must be the one who can get the best results."
"Life would be unbearable if death were not worse yet."
"The most frightening phrase in the Russian language is 'That's odd.'"
"Anyone can hunt a bear fearlessly when the bear is absent."
"It's more important to know the thing than the name."
"If you are dangling from a rope over an abyss, don't bother snatching at a coin that falls out of your pocket."
"If trouble were as easy to get out of as into -- life would be one sweet song."
"Not quite," said Morrison grimly. "Red corpuscles are continually replaced. Neurons never are."
"He used to say: 'When only one course of action is possible, there is no difficulty in deciding what to do.'"
"I'm certain, Natalya, that it is not terribly important to determine our position."
"Vehemence, my little son, is no guarantee of truth."
"We must deminiaturize to some extent, to begin with."
"Yes, but surely not to the extent of risking five lives."
"The trouble with triumph is that you may be on the other side."