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By The Laws Of Statistics We Could Probably Approximate Just How Unlikely It Is That It Would Happen. But People Forget Especially Those Who Ought To Know Better, Such As Yourself That While The Laws Of Statistics Tell You How Unlikely A Particular Coincidence Is, They State Just As Firmly That Coincidences Do Happen.

-Robert A. Heinlein

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By The Laws Of

Robert A. Heinlein

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By The Laws Of Statistics We Could Probably Approximate Just How Unlikely It Is That It Would Happen. But People Forget Especially Those Who Ought To Know Better, Such As Yourself That While The Laws Of Statistics Tell You How Unlikely A Particular Coincidence Is, They State Just As Firmly That Coincidences Do Happen.

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The Best Things In History Are Accomplished By People Who Get Tired Of Being Shoved Around.

All Normal Human Beings Have Soi-disant Mixed-up Glands. The Race Is Divided Into Two Parts: Those Who Know This And Those Who Do Not.

They Didn't Want It Good, They Wanted It Wednesday.

Goodness Without Wisdom Always Accomplishes Evil.

The United States Has Become A Place Where Entertainers And Professional Athletes Are Mistaken For People Of Importance.

Those Who Refuse To Support And Defend The State Have No Claim To Protection By That State. Killing An Anarchist Or A Pacifist Should Not Be Considered "murder" In A Legalistic Sense. The Offense Against The State, If Any, Should Be "using Deadly Weapons Within City Limits," Or "creating A Traffic Hazard," Or Other Misdemeanor.

Never Worry About Theory As Long As The Machinery Does What It's Supposed To Do.

No Storyteller Has Been Able To Dream Up Anything As Fantastically Unlikely As What Really Does Happen In This Mad Universe.

Don't Appeal To Mercy To God The Father Up In The Sky, Little Man, Because He's Not At Home And Never Was At Home, And Couldn't Care Less. What You Do With Yourself, Whether You Are Happy Or Unhappy- Live Or Die- Is Strictly Your Business And The Universe Doesn't Care. In Fact You May Be The Universe And The Only Cause Of All Your Troubles. But, At Best, The Most You Can Hope For Is Comradeship With Comrades No More Divine (or Just As Divine) As You Are. So Quit Sniveling And Face Up To It- 'thou Art God!'

A Friend Who Offers Help Without Asking For Explanations Is A Treasure Beyond Price

Cute Friendship

People Usually Believe Anything That They Are Told Early And Often.

Each Generation Thinks It Invented Sex; Each Generation Is Totally Mistaken. Anything Along That Line Today Was Commonplace Both In Pompeii And In Victorian England; The Differences Lie Only In The Degree Of Coverup - If Any.

Never Trust Machinery More Complicated Than A Knife And Fork.

Who Is More Real? Homer Or Ulysses? Shakespeare Or Hamlet? Burroughs Or Tarzan?

There Is Solemn Satisfaction In Doing The Best You Can For Eight Billion People. Perhaps Their Lives Have No Cosmic Significance, But They Have Feelings. They Can Hurt.

Social Responsibility Above The Level Of Family, Or At Most Of Tribe, Requires Imagination-- Devotion, Loyalty, All The Higher Virtues -- Which A Man Must Develop Himself; If He Has Them Forced Down Him, He Will Vomit Them Out.

It Was Better To Live With Disappointment And Frustration Than To Live Without Hope.

In Past History Popularly Elected Governments Have Been No Better And Sometimes Far Worse Than Overt Tyrannies.

When You Vote, You Are Exercising Political Authority, You're Using Force. And Force, My Friends, Is Violence. The Supreme Authority From Which All Other Authorities Are Derived.

Have You Ever Known Me To Be Rude To A Lady?" "i Have Seen You Be Intentionally Rude To A Woman. I Have Never Seen You Be Rude To A Lady.

A Child's Life Is Like A Piece Of Paper On Which Every Person Leaves A Mark.

Don't Explain Computers To Laymen. Simpler To Explain Sex To A Virgin.

Figure Out For Yourself What You Want To Be Really Good At, Know That You'll Never Really Satisfy Yourself That You've Made It, And Accept That That's Okay.

The Future Is Better Than The Past. Despite The Crepe Hangers, Romanticists, And Anti-intellectuals, The World Steadily Grows Better Because The Human Mind, Applying Itself To Environment, Makes It Better. With Hands ... With Tools ... With Horse Sense And Science And Engineering.

All Human Behavior, All Human Motivations, All Man’s Hopes And Fears, Were Heavily Colored And Largely Controlled By Mankind’s Tragic And Oddly Beautiful Pattern Of Reproduction.

Women Are Amazing Creatures-sweet, Soft, Gentle, And Far More Savage Than We Are.

I Have Never Been Able To See Life As Anything But A Vast Complicated Practical Joke, And It's Better To Laugh Than Cry.

If An Elderly Respected Expert In A Given Field Tells You That Something Can Be Done He Is Almost Certainly Right. If An Elderly Respected Expert In A Given Field Tells You That Something Is Impossible, He Is Almost Certainly Wrong.

A Well Regulated Militia, Being Necessary To The Security Of A Free State, The Right Of The People To Keep And Bear Arms, Shall Not Be Infringed. - Second Amendment To The Constitution An Armed Society Is A Polite Society.

Libertarian Party

Assault Weapons

The Profession Of Shaman Has Many Advantages. It Offers High Status With A Safe Livelihood Free Of Work In The Dreary, Sweaty Sense. In Most Societies It Offers Legal Privileges And Immunities Not Granted To Other Men. But It Is Hard To See How A Man Who Has Been Given A Mandate From On High To Spread Tidings Of Joy To All Mankind Can Be Seriously Interested In Taking Up A Collection To Pay His Salary; It Causes One To Suspect That The Shaman Is On The Moral Level Of Any Other Con Man. But It Is A Lovely Work If You Can Stomach It.

But When They Began Handing Out Doctorates For Comparative Folk Dancing And Advanced Fly-fishing, I Became Too Stink In’ Proud To Use The Title. I Won’t Touch Watered Whiskey And I Take No Pride In Watered-down Degrees.

Almost Everything About A Human Creature Is Ridiculous, Except Its Ability To Suffer Bravely And Die Gallantly For Whatever It Loves And Believes In. The Validity Of That Belief, The Appropriateness Of That Love, Is Irrelevant; It Is The Bravery And The Gallantry That Count.

Learning . . . Is - Also An End In Itself.

My Dear, I Used To Think I Was Serving Humanity . . . And I Pleasured In The Thought. Then I Discovered That Humanity Does Not Want To Be Served; On The Contrary It Resents Any Attempt To Serve It. So Now I Do What Pleases Myself.

Come Judgment Day, We May Find That Mumbo Jumbo The God Of The Congo Was The Big Boss All Along.

It May Take Endless Wars And Unbearable Population Pressure To Force-feed A Technology To The Point Where It Can Cope With Space. In The Universe, Space Travel May Be The Normal Birth Pangs Of An Otherwise Dying Race. A Test. Some Races Pass, Some Fail.

Heinlein's Rules For Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except To Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story On The Market Rule Five: You Must Keep It On The Market Until It Has Sold

Never Own More Than You Can Carry In Both Hands At A Dead Run.

To Get Anywhere, Or Even To Live A Long Time, A Man Has To Guess, And Guess Right, Over And Over Again, Without Enough Data For A Logical Answer.

Do Not Confuse "duty" With What Other People Expect Of You; They Are Utterly Different. Duty Is A Debt You Owe To Yourself To Fulfill Obligations You Have Assumed Voluntarily. Paying That Debt Can Entail Anything From Years Of Patient Work To Instant Willingness To Die. Difficult It May Be, But The Reward Is Self-respect.

Of All The Strange 'crimes' That Human Beings Have Legislated Out Of Nothing, 'blasphemy' Is The Most Amazing -- With 'obscenity' And 'indecent Exposure' Fighting It Out For Second And Third Place.

A Boy Who Gets A C- In 'appreciation Of Television' Can't Be All Bad.

The Lessons Of History Teach Us - If The Lessons Of History Teach Us Anything - That Nobody Learns The Lessons That History Teaches Us.

Money Is Truthful. If A Man Speaks Of His Honor, Make Him Pay Cash.

What We Think Of As 'physical Beauty' Is Almost Certainly A Tag For A Complex Of Useful Survival Characteristics. Smartness - Intelligence - Among Them.

There Is An Old Song Which Asserts 'the Best Things In Life Are Free.' Not True! Utterly False! This Was The Tragic Fallacy Which Brought On The Decadence And Collapse Of The Democracies Of The Twentieth Century; Those Noble Experiments Failed Because The People Had Been Led To Believe That They Could Simply Vote For Whatever They Wanted...and Get It Without Toil, Without Sweat, Without Tears. Nothing Of Value Is Free. Even The Breath Of Life Is Purchased At Birth Only Through Gasping Effort And Pain.

A Family Reunion Is An Effective Form Of Birth Control.

Government! Three-fourths Parasitic And The Rest Stupid Fumbling - Oh, Harshaw Concluded That Man, A Social Animal, Could Not Avoid Government, Any More Than An Individual Could Escape Bondage To His Bowels. But Simply Because An Evil Was Inescapable Was No Reason To Term It "good." He Wished That Government Would Wander Off And Get Lost! (96)

Paymasters Come In Only Two Sizes: One Sort Shows You Where The Book Says That You Can't Have What You've Got Coming To You; The Second Sort Digs Through The Book Until He Finds A Paragraph That Lets You Have What You Need Even If You Don't Rate It.

I See The Beauty Of Mike's Attempt To Devise An Ideal Ethic And Applaud His Recognition That Such Must Start By Junking The Present Sexual Code And Starting Fresh. Most Philosophers Haven't The Courage For This; They Swallow The Basics Of The Present Code--monogamy, Family Pattern, Continence, Body Taboos, Conventional Restrictions On Intercourse, And So Forth--then Fiddle With Details...even Such Piffle As Discussing Whether The Female Breast Is An Obscene Sight! (p.365)

An Armed Society Is A Polite Society. Manners Are Good When One May Have To Back Up His Acts With His Life.

Around The Time Of The Terran Caesar Augustus, A Martian Artist Had Been Composing A Work Of Art. It Could Have Been Called A Poem, A Musical Opus, Or A Philosophical Treatise; It Was A Series Of Emotions Arranged In Tragic, Logical Necessity. Since It Could Be Experienced By A Human Only In The Sense In Which A Man Blind From Birth Might Have A Sunset Explained To Him, It Does Not Matter Which Category It Be Assigned.

Patriotism Is Not Sentimental Nonsense. Nor Something Dreamed Up By Demagogues. Patriotism Is As Necessary A Part Of Man's Evolutionary Equipment As Are His Eyes, As Useful To The Race As Eyes Are To The Individual.

Democracy's Worst Fault Is That Its Leaders Are Likely To Reflect The Faults And Virtues Of Their Constituents.

High Frontier Places A Bullet-proof Vest On Our Bare Chest. High Frontier Is As Non-aggressive As A Bullet-proof Vest. There Is No Way To Kill Anyone With High Frontier - All That High Frontier Can Do Is To Keep Others From Killing Us.

Your Enemy Is Never A Villain In His Own Eyes. Keep This In Mind; It May Offer A Way To Make Him Your Friend. If Not, You Can Kill Him Without Hate — And Quickly.

Each Man Is His Own Prisoner, In Solitary Confinement For Life.

Any Group Is Weaker Than A Man Alone Unless They Are Perfectly Trained To Work Together.

Working Together

The Purpose Of War Is To Support Your Government's Decisions By Force.

I Believe In - I Am Proud To Belong To - The United States.

The Ethics Of Sex Is A Thorny Problem. Each Of Us Is Forced To Grope For A Solution He Can Live With - In The Face Of Preposterous, Unworkable, And Evil Code Of So-called 'morals.' Most Of Us Know The Code Is Wrong, Almost Everybody Breaks It. But We Pay Danegeld By Feeling Guilty And Giving Lip Service. Willy-nilly, The Code Rides Us, Dead And Stinking, An Albatross Around The Neck.

If God Existed (a Question Concerning Which Jubal Maintained A Meticulous Intellectual Neutrality) And If He Desired To Be Worshiped (a Proposition Which Jubal Found Inherently Improbable But Conceivably Possible In The Dim Light Of His Own Ignorance), Then (stipulating Affirmatively Both The Above) It Nevertheless Seemed Wildly Unlikely To Jubal To The Point Of Reductio Ad Absurdum That A God Potent To Shape Galaxies Would Be Titillated And Swayed By The Whoop-te-do Nonsense The Fosterites Offered Him As "worship.

The Killer Looked Up As The Bullet Hit Him. He Looked As If He Were Puzzled By Some Strange Occurence, Being Too Freshly Dead To Be Aware Of It.

Logic Is A Feeble Reed, Friend. "logic" Proved That Airplanes Can't Fly And That H-bombs Won't Work And That Stones Don't Fall Out Of The Sky. Logic Is A Way Of Saying That Anything Which Didn't Happen Yesterday Won't Happen Tomorrow.

We Have Our Hands, We Have Our Brains, We Have The Challenge All Around Us, And We Have Within (from Whatever Source) The Will To Strive. That Is Enough; There Is No Need To Assert 'belief' In That Which We Do Not, As Yet, Know.

Courage Is The Complement Of Fear. A Man Who Is Fearless Cannot Be Courageous. [he Is Also A Fool.]

Don't Handicap Your Children By Making Their Lives Easy.

Girls Are Simply Wonderful. Just To Stand On A Corner And Watch Them Going Past Is Delightful. They Don't Walk. At Least Not What We Do When We Walk. I Don't Know How To Describe It, But It's Much More Complex And Utterly Delightful. They Don't Move Just Their Feet; Everything Moves And In Different Directions . . . And All Of It Graceful.

A Managed Democracy Is A Wonderful Thing... For The Managers... And Its Greatest Strength Is A 'free Press' When 'free' Is Defined As 'responsible' And The Managers Define What Is 'irresponsible'.

The Stone Trembled And Threw Herself Outward Bound, Toward Saturn. In Her Train Followed Hundreds And Thousands And Hundreds Of Thousands Of Thousands Of Restless, Rolling Stones . . . To Saturn . . . To Uranus, To Pluto . . . Rolling On Out To The Stars . . . Outward Bound To The Ends Of The Universe.

Analogy Is Even Slipperier Than Logic.

No Matter Where Or What, There Are Makers, Takers, And Fakers.

Anything Will Burn With Enough Gasoline And Dynamite.

More People Worry Themselves To Death Than Bleed To Death.

When The Need Arises - And It Does - You Must Be Able To Shoot Your Own Dog. Don't Farm It Out — That Doesn't Make It Nicer, It Makes It Worse.

History Does Not Record Anywhere Or At Any Time A Religion That Has Any Rational Basis.

Seems To Be A Deep Instinct In Human Beings For Making Everything Compulsory That Isn't Forbidden.

I Have Never Been Able To See How A Thirty-year Old Moron Can Vote More Wisely Than A Fifteen-year Old Genius.

The Two Highest Achievements Of The Human Mind Are The Twin Concepts Of "loyalty" And "duty". Whenever These Twin Concepts Fall Into Disrepute, Get Out Of There Fast! You May Possibly Save Yourself, But It Is Too Late To Save That Society. It Is Doomed.

An Armed Society Is A Polite Society.

There Is No Worse Tyranny Than To Force A Man To Pay For What He Does Not Want Merely Because You Think It Would Be Good For Him.

Most Gods Have The Manners And Morals Of A Spoiled Child.

My Vocal Cords Lived Their Own Life, Wild And Free.

Ninety Percent Of All Human Wisdom Is The Ability To Mind Your Own Business.

Mind Your Own Business

An Animal So Poor In Spirit That He Won't Even Fight On His Own Behalf Is Already An Evolutionary Dead End; The Best He Can Do For His Breed Is To Crawl Off And Die, And Not Pass On His Defective Genes.

Never Cast Pearls Before Swine.

Nothing Could Go Wrong Because Nothing Had...i Meant "nothing Would." No - Then I Quit Trying To Phrase It, Realizing That If Time Travel Ever Became Widespread, English Grammar Was Going To Have To Add A Whole New Set Of Tenses To Describe Reflexive Situations - Conjugations That Would Make The French Literary Tenses And The Latin Historical Tenses Look Simple.

English Grammar

Men Are More Sentimental Than Women. It Blurs Their Thinking.

The Right To Figure Things Out For Yourself Is The Only True Freedom Everyone Shares. Go Use It.

He's As Weird As Snake's Suspenders But Sweet As A Stolen Kiss, Too.

Never Crowd Youngsters About Their Private Affairs - Sex Especially.

It Would Take Centuries And He Must Grow And Grow And Grow, But He Was In No Hurry--he Grokked That Eternity And The Ever-beautifully-changing Now Were Identical.

A Girl's Name Ending In 'a' - That Always Suggests A 'c' Cup.

If Possible, Leave Room For Your Enemy To Become Your Friend.

Jill: 'i Don't Pay Attention To Politics.' Ben: 'you Should. It's Barely Less Important Than Your Own Heart Beat.' Jill: 'i Don't Pay Attention To That, Either.'

Many Short-sighted Fools Think That Going To The Moon Was Just A Stunt. But The Astronauts Knew The Meaning Of What They Were Doing, As Is Shown By Neil Armstrong's First Words In Stepping Down Onto The Soil Of Luna: "one Small Step For A Man, One Giant Leap For Mankind."

English Is The Largest Of Human Tongues, With Several Times The Vocabulary Of The Second Largest Language -- This Alone Made It Inevitable That English Would Eventually Become, As It Did, The Lingua Franca Of This Planet, For It Is Thereby The Richest And Most Flexible -- Despite Its Barbaric Accretions . . . Or, I Should Say, Because Of Its Barbaric Accretions. English Swallows Up Anything That Comes Its Way, Makes English Out Of It.

God Created Men To Test The Souls Of Women.

Nothing Of Value Is Free. Even The Breath Of Life Is Purchased At Birth Only Through Gasping Effort And Pain.

Man Has No Moral Instinct. He Is Not Born With Moral Sense. You Were Not Born With It, I Was Not - And A Puppy Has None. We Acquire Moral Sense, When We Do, Through Training, Experience, And Hard Sweat Of The Mind.

You Can Go Wrong By Being Too Skeptical As Readily As By Being Too Trusting.

A Human Being Has No Natural Rights Of Any Nature.

Butterflies Are Not Insects,' Captain John Sterling Said Soberly. 'they Are Self-propelled Flowers.

The Most Ridiculous Concept Ever Perpetrated By Homo Sapiens Is That The Lord God Of Creation, Shaper And Ruler Of The Universes, Wants The Saccharine Adoration Of His Creations, That He Can Be Persuaded By Their Prayers, And Becomes Petulant If He Does Not Receive This Flattery. Yet This Ridiculous Notion, Without One Real Shred Of Evidence To Bolster It, Has Gone On To Found One Of The Oldest, Largest And Least Productive Industries In History.

I Don't See How An Article Of Clothing Can Be Indecent. A Person, Yes.

He's An Honest Politician--he Stays Bought.

Roman Matrons Used To Say To Their Sons: 'come Back With Your Shield Or On It.' Later On, This Custom Declined. So Did Rome... (but Not Before It Created An Empire That Changed The World -em).

In Wilson's Scale Of Evaluations Breakfast Rated Just After Life Itself And Ahead Of The Chance Of Immortality.

Customs Tell A Man Who He Is, Where He Belongs, What He Must Do. Better Illogical Customs Than None; Men Cannot Live Together Without Them.

Since Survival Is The Sine Qua Non, I Now Define The "moral Behavior" As "behavior That Tends Toward Survival".

Unarmed Hand-to-hand Fighting Does Not Change Through The Ages; Only The Name Changes, And It Has Only One Rule: Do It First, Do It Fast, Do It Dirtiest.

I'm Afraid Of Coaching, Of Writer's Classes, Of Writer's Magazines, Of Books On How To Write. They Give Me Centipede Trouble - You Know The Yarn About The Centipede Who Was Asked How He Managed All His Feet? He Tried To Answer, Stopped To Think About It, And Was Never Able To Walk Another Step.

Pain Is The Basic Mechanism Built Into Us By Millions Of Years Of Evolution Which Safeguards Us By Warning When Something Threatens Our Survival.

Anyone Can See A Forest Fire. Skill Lies In Sniffing The First Smoke.

I Would Say That My Position Is Not Too Far From That Of Ayn Rand's; That I Would Like To See Government Reduced To No More Than Internal Police And Courts, External Armed Forces - With The Other Matters Handled Otherwise. I'm Sick Of The Way Government Sticks Its Nose In Everything, Now.

Delusions Are Often Functional. A Mother's Opinions About Her Children's Beauty, Intelligence, Goodness, Et Cetera Ad Nauseam, Keep Her From Drowning Them At Birth.

Never Insult Anyone By Accident.

No Statement Should Be Believed Because It Is Made By An Authority.

My Old Man Says When It's Time To Be Counted, The Important Thing Is To Be Man Enough To Stand Up.

A Zygote Is A Gamete's Way Of Producing More Gametes. This May Be The Purpose Of The Universe.

Selfishness Is The Bedrock On Which All Moral Behavior Starts And It Can Be Immoral Only When It Conflicts With A Higher Moral Imperative.

People Simplify 'apollonian' Into 'mild', And 'calm', And 'cool'. But 'apollonian' And 'dionysian' Are Two Sides Of One Coin--a Nun Kneeling In Her Cell, Holding Perfectly Still, Can Be In Ecstacy More Frenzied Than Any Priestess Of Pan Priapus Celebrating The Vernal Equinox.

A Prude Is A Person Who Thinks That His Own Rules Of Propriety Are Natural Laws.

I Don't Know Who Is Cranking; I'm Pleased He Doesn't Stop.

Son, The Phrase Is Self-contradictory; "sense" Is Never "common".

Logic Is A Feeble Reed, Friend.

Most People Who Sneer At Technology Would Starve To Death If The Engineering Infrastructure Were Removed.

The Most Expensive Thing In The World Is A Second-best Military Establishment, Good But Not Good Enough To Win.

When I Don’t Understand, I Have An Unbearable Itch To Know Why.

Happiness Consists In Getting Enough Sleep. Just That, Nothing More.

Circumstances Can Force Your Hand. So Think Ahead!

Never Underestimate The Power Of Human Stupidity.

Always Tell Her She Is Beautiful, Especially If She Is Not.

I Had Taken A Partner Once Before—but, Damnation, No Matter How Many Times You Get Your Fingers Burned, You Have To Trust People. Otherwise You Are A Hermit In A Cave, Sleeping With One Eye Open.

It Is Better To Copulate Than Never.

I Don't See Why Human People Make Such A Heavy Trip Out Of Sex. It Isn't Anything Complex, It Is Simply The Best Thing In Life, Even Better Than Food.

There Is No Way That Writers Can Be Tamed And Rendered Civilized Or Even Cured. The Only Solution Known To Science Is To Provide The Patient With An Isolation Room, Where He Can Endure The Acute Stages In Private And Where Food Can Be Poked In To Him With A Stick.

A Committee Is A Life Form With Six Or More Legs And No Brain.

My Folks Tried To Make A Preacher Of Me And Missed By A Narrow Margin… I Would Have Made A Good One If I Hadn’t Fallen Into The Fatal Folly Of Reading Anything I Could Lay Hands On. With Just A Touch More Self Confidence And A Liberal Helping Of Ignorance I Could Have Been A Famous Evangelist.

Self Confidence

I Am Not Going To Talk About Religious Beliefs, But About Matters So Obvious That It Has Gone Out Of Style To Mention Them.

Of All The Nonsense That Twists The World, The Concept Of 'altruism' Is The Worst. People Do What They Want To, Every Time. If It Pains Them To Make A Choice - If The Choice Looks Like A 'sacrifice' - You Can Be Sure That It Is No Nobler Than The Discomfort Caused By Greediness... The Necessity Of Deciding Between Two Things You Want When You Can't Have Both.

People Who Go Broke In A Big Way Never Miss Any Meals. It Is The Poor Jerk Who Is Shy A Half Slug Who Must Tighten His Belt.

Avoid Making Irrevocable Decisions While Tired Or Hungry.

Humans Hardly Ever Learn From The Experience Of Others. They Learn - When They Do, Which Isn't Often - On Their Own, The Hard Way.

Wisdom Includes Not Getting Angry Unnecessarily. The Law Ignores Trifles And The Wise Man Does, Too.

You Were Probably Educated In The Conventional Economic Theories Of Your Period Which Were Magnificent And Most Ingenious, But--if You Will Pardon My Saying So--all Wrong.

If You Would Know A Man, Observe How He Treats A Cat.

The Trouble With Conspiracies Is That They Rot Internally.

Throughout History, Poverty Is The Normal Condition Of Man. Advances Which Permit This Norm To Be Exceeded — Here And There, Now And Then — Are The Work Of An Extremely Small Minority, Frequently Despised, Often Condemned, And Almost Always Opposed By All Right-thinking People. Whenever This Tiny Minority Is Kept From Creating, Or (as Sometimes Happens) Is Driven Out Of A Society, The People Then Slip Back Into Abject Poverty. This Is Known As "bad Luck.

In A Mature Society, 'civil Servant' Is Semantically Equal To 'civil Master.'

Ayn Rand Is A Bloody Socialist Compared To Me.

Everything In Excess! To Enjoy The Flavor Of Life, Take Big Bites. Moderation Is For Monks.

The Moral Difference Between A Soldier And A Civilian Is That The Soldier Accepts Personal Responsibility For The Safety Of The Body Politic Of Which He Is A Member. The Civilian Does Not.

Place Your Clothes And Weapons Where You Can Find Them In The Dark.

Once A Man Gets A Reputation As A Liar, He Might As Well Be Struck Dumb, For People Do Not Listen To The Wind.

Man Can Be Chained, But He Cannot Be Domesticated.

That Old Saw About The Early Bird Just Proves That The Worm Should Have Stayed In Bed.

Certain Types Of Loudmouthism Should Be A Capital Offense Among Decent People.

There Are Things Which Cannot Be Taught In Ten Easy Lessons, Nor Popularized For The Masses; They Take Years Of Skull Sweat.

Nowhere On Earth Was Sex So Vigorously Suppressed As In America--and Nowhere Else Was There Such A Deep Interest In It.

Heroism' Often Consists In Keeping Your Head In An Emergency And Doing The Best You Can With What You Have Instead Of Panicking And Being Shot In The Tail. People Who Fight This Way Win More Battles Than Do Intentional Heroes; A Glory Hound Often Throws Away The Lives Of His Mates As Well As His Own.

Why Don't They Make More Science Fiction Movies? The Answer To Any Question Starting, Why Don't They- Is Almost Always, Money.

Christ Was Crucified For Preaching Without A Police Permit

Stranger In A Strange Land

He Had Learned That Close-held Secrets Could Often Be Cracked By Going All The Way To The Top And There Making Himself Unbearably Unpleasant. He Knew That Such Twisting Of The Tiger's Tail Was Dangerous, For He Understood The Psychopathology Of Great Power.

English Is Capable Of Defining Sentiments That The Human Nervous System Is Quite Incapable Of Experiencing.

English Language

Limiting The Freedom Of News 'just A Little Bit' Is In The Same Category With The Classic Example 'a Little Bit Pregnant.

You Don’t Pay Back, You Pay Forward.

Every General Prohibition Creates Its Bootleggers.

I Have Spent Too Much Of My Life Opening Doors For Cats—i Once Calculated That, Since The Dawn Of Civilization, Nine Hundred And Seventy-eight Man-centuries Have Been Used Up That Way. I Could Show You Figures.

Why Do Some People Act As If Making Money Offended Their Delicate Minds? I Am Out For A Legitimate Profit, And Not Ashamed Of It; The Fact That People Will Pay Money For My Goods And Services Shows That My Work Is Useful.

The Earth Is Just Too Small And Fragile A Basket For The Human Race To Keep All Its Eggs In.

We Learned Not To Waste Ammo Even On Warriors Except In Self-protection

No Intelligent Man Has Any Respect For An Unjust Law.

To Assess The Intelligence Of A Committee, Divide The Iq Of Its Stupidest Member By The Number Of Members.

Faith Strikes Me As Intellectual Laziness.

Never Frighten A Little Man. He'll Kill You.

Are You Trying To Tell All Of Us We Have A Bad Signal-to-noise Ratio?

Coffee Comes In Five Descending Stages: Coffee, Java, Jamoke, Joe, And Carbon Remover.

But Does Man Have Any 'right' To Spread Through The Universe? Man Is What He Is, A Wild Animal With The Will To Survive, And (so Far) The Ability, Against All Competition. Unless One Accepts That, Anything One Says About Morals, War, Politics, You Name It, Is Nonsense. Correct Morals Arise From Knowing What Man Is, Not What Do-gooders And Well-meaning Old Aunt Nellies Would Like Him To Be. The Universe Will Let Us Know - Later - Whether Or Not Man Has Any "right" To Expand Through It.

Humoring Them Costs Nothing And Adds To Happiness In A World In Which Happiness Is Always In Short Supply.

Anyone Who Can Worship A Trinity And Insist That His Religion Is A Monotheism Can Believe Anything.

You're In Bad Shape When Your Emotions Force You Into Acts Which You Know Are Foolish.

Cast Me Into A Dungeon, Burn Me At The Stake, Crown Me King Of Kings, I Can 'pursue Happiness' As Long As My Brain Lives - But Neither Gods Nor Saints, Wise Men Nor Subtle Drugs, Can Ensure That I Will Catch It.

Sin Lies Only In Hurting Others Unnecessarily. All Other "sins" Are Invented Nonsense.

If You've Got The Truth You Can Demonstrate It. Talking Doesn't Prove It.

Decency Is Not News; It Is Buried In The Obituaries - But It Is A Force Stronger Than Crime.

Some People Insist That "mediocre" Is Better Than "best." They Delight In Clipping Wings Because They Themselves Can't Fly. They Despise Brains Because They Have None.

Anything Which Is Physically Possible Can Always Be Made Financially Possible; Money Is A Bugaboo Of Small Minds.

Every Law That Was Ever Written Opened Up A New Way To Graft.

The Difference Between Science And The Fuzzy Subjects Is That Science Requires Reasoning While Those Other Subjects Merely Require Scholarship.

Nor Would Anybody Suspect. If Was One Thing All People Took For Granted, Was Conviction That If You Feed Honest Figures Into A Computer, Honest Figures Come Out. Never Doubted It Myself Till I Met A Computer With A Sense Of Humor.

Certainly The Game Is Rigged. Don't Let That Stop You; If You Don't Bet You Can't Win.

For Me, Politeness Is A Sine Qua Non Of Civilization.

A Long And Wicked Life Followed By Five Minutes Of Perfect Grace Gets You Into Heaven. An Equally Long Life Of Decent Living And Good Works Followed By One Outburst Of Taking The Name Of The Lord In Vain- Then Have A Heart Attack At That Moment And Be Damned For Eternity. Is That The System?

I Have Never Been Impressed By The Formal Schools Of Ethics.

"i've Found Out Why People Laugh. They Laugh Because It Hurts So Much... Because It's The Only Thing That'll Make It Stop Hurting" ... "but That's Not All People Laugh At." "isn't It? Perhaps I Don't Grok All Its Fullness Yet. But Find Me Something That Really Makes You Laugh Sweetheart... A Joke, Or Anything Else- But Something That Gave You A A Real Belly Laugh, Not A Smile. Then We'll See If There Isn't A Wrongness Wasn't There." He Thought. "i Grok When Apes Learn To Laugh, They'll Be People."

Always Listen To Experts. They'll Tell You What Can't Be Done, And Why. Then Do It.

You Live And Learn. Or You Don't Live Long.

When Railroading Time Comes You Can Railroad—but Not Before.

Damnit! Nationalism Should Stop At The Stratosphere!

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Elizabeth Goudge

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