Jack Vance Quotes

It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.

I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.

Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.

Stereotypes happen. I try not to embrace them or avoid them.

Whenever you see people talking about how real they are or how normal they are, it seems odd to have that self awareness that you could potentially not be normal.

How you choose to present yourself to the world shows what's meaningful to you - and what you want others to think is meaningful to you.

If I had two faces, do you think I would be wearing this one.

If we do not know what humor is, that may be because we do not know what humankind is.

We fight the stereotypes, but in fighting them, we show them. There are stereotypes for a reason.

The boundary between civilization and barbarism is difficult to draw: put one ring in your nose and you are a savage, put two rings in your ears and you are civilized.

To be ignorant of one's own ignorance is to be in an unprogressive, uninspired state of existence.

He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

As in, I wouldn't know normal if it marched up and poked me in the eye.

To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.

We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

White folks are not going to come to see a bunch of guys with tattoos, with cornrows. I'm sorry, but anyone who thinks different, they're stupid.

Even those of us who are very very aware are still so unaware. Everything's relative so that, the more you know, the more you know you don't know anything.

Don't think you are looking at me because you are not.

Success causes us to be more praised than known.

Once you become aware of your own body and its movements, you will be surprised that you are not your body. This is something of a basic principle, that if you can watch something then you are not it. You are the watcher, not the watched. You are the observer, not the observed. How can you be both?

When I was photographed, I didn't feel I was acting. I just felt I was being photographed. It sort of taught me things about myself that I didn't know and was trying to find out.

I know what I'm doing. And I even know when I don't know what I'm doing. Then there are people who don't want to know that you know what you're doing.

For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.