Background Image

...

Liberty Is Never Unalienable; It Must Be Redeemed Regularly With The Blood Of Patriots Or It Always Vanishes. Of All The So-called Natural Human Rights That Have Ever Been Invented, Liberty Is Least Likely To Be Cheap And Is Never Free Of Cost.

-Robert A. Heinlein

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Liberty Is Never Unalienable;

Robert A. Heinlein

...

Liberty Is Never Unalienable; It Must Be Redeemed Regularly With The Blood Of Patriots Or It Always Vanishes. Of All The So-called Natural Human Rights That Have Ever Been Invented, Liberty Is Least Likely To Be Cheap And Is Never Free Of Cost.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Robert A. Heinlein

An Armed Society Is A Polite Society.

Women Will Forgive Anything. Otherwise, The Race Would Have Died Out Long Ago.

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.

The Whole Principle (censorship) Is Wrong; It's Like Demanding That Grown Men Live On Skim Milk Because The Baby Can't Eat Steak.

Never Attribute To Malice That Which Can Be Adequately Explained By Stupidity. Never Underestimate The Power Of Human Stupidity.

You Got The Impression That He Never Needed To Sleep - Just Ten-thousand-mile Checkups And Dust Him Off Occasionally.

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.

Neither Individuals Nor Corporations Have Any Right To Come Into Court And Ask That The Clock Of History Be Stopped, Or Turned Back.

Spacemen - Men Who Work In Space, Pilots And Jetmen And Astrogators And Such - Are Men Who Like A Few Million Miles Of Elbow Room.

Men Rarely If Ever Dream Up A God Superior To Themselves. Most Gods Have The Manners And Morals Of A Spoiled Child.

Aside From A Cold Appreciation Of My Own Genius I Felt That I Was A Modest Man.

I Never Learned From A Man Who Agreed With Me.

Everything Is Theoretically Impossible, Until It Is Done.

Impossible Things

A Committee Is The Only Known Form Of Life With A Hundred Bellies And No Brain.

I Remembered A Time When My Grandmother Had Asked Me To Explain Television To Her - The Guts, Not The Funny Pictures. There Are Things Which Cannot Be Taught In Ten Easy Lessons, Nor Popularized For The Masses; They Take Years Of Skull Sweat. This Be Treason In An Age When Ignorance Has Come Into Its Own And One Man's Opinion Is As Good As Another's. But There It Is. As Star Says, The World Is What It Is - And Doesn't Forgive Ignorance.

One Of The Sanest, Surest, And Most Generous Joys Of Life Comes From Being Happy Over The Good Fortune Of Others.

Every Congressman, Every Senator Knows Precisely What Causes Inflation... But Can't, [won't] Support The Drastic Reforms To Stop It [repeal Of The Federal Reserve Act] Because It Could Cost Him His Job.

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.

What Is Supposed To Happen In A Democracy Is That Each Sovereign Citizen Will Always Vote In The Public Interest For The Safety And Welfare Of All. But What Does Happen Is That He Votes His Own Self-interest As He Sees It... Which For The Majority Translates As 'bread And Circuses'.

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

I Think Perhaps Of All The Things A Police State Can Do To Its Citizens, Distorting History Is Possibly The Most Pernicious.

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'.

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

There Will Always Be Survivors.

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

Working Together

A Community Where Everyone Is A Ruthless Murderer, With Handy Access To Death-dealing Devices, Is A Very Polite Community.

Long Human Words (the Longer The Better) Were Easy, Unmistakable, And Rarely Changed Their Meanings . . . But Short Words Were Slippery, Unpredictable, Changing Their Meanings Without Any Pattern.

I Believe That This Hairless Embryo With The Aching, Oversize Brain Case And The Opposable Thumb, This Animal Barely Up From The Apes, Will Endure --will Endure Longer Than His Home Planet, Will Spread Out To The Other Planets, To The Stars, And Beyond, Carrying With Him His Honesty, His Insatiable Curiosity, His Unlimited Courage --and His Noble Essential Decency. This I Believe With All My Heart.

A Skunk Is Better Company Than A Person Who Prides Himself On Being 'frank'.

Dad Claims That Library Science Is The Foundation Of All Sciences Just As Math Is The Key -- And We Will Survive Or Founder, Depending On How Well The Librarians Do Their Jobs. Librarians Didn't Look Glamorous To Me But Maybe Dad Had Hit On A Not Very Obvious Truth.

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

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.

It's Up To The Artist To Use Language That Can Be Understood, Not Hide It In Some Private Code... Obscurity Is Usually The Refuge Of Incompetence.

It Is Impossible For Anyone To Be Responsible For Another Person's Behavior. The Most You Or Any Leader Can Do Is To Encourage Each One To Be Responsible For Himself.

Following Your Own Path

The Most Noble Fate A Man Can Endure Is To Place His Own Mortal Body Between His Loved Home And The War's Desolation.

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

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

Physicians Had Gone To Their Graves Calling Pasteur A Liar, A Fool, Or Worse—without Examining Evidence Which Their “common Sense” Told Them Was Impossible.

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

Victory In Defeat, There Is None Higher. She Didn't Give Up, Ben; She's Still Trying To Lift That Stone After It Has Crushed Her. She's A Father Working While Cancer Eats Away His Insides, To Bring Home One More Pay Check. She's A Twelve-year-old Trying To Mother Her Brothers And Sisters Because Mama Had To Go To Heaven. She's A Switchboard Operator Sticking To Her Post While Smoke Chokes Her And Fire Cuts Off Her Escape. She's All The Unsung Heroes Who Couldn't Make It But Never Quit.

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.

The Intelligent Fights Only When He Must And Never For Sport.

Christ Was Crucified For Preaching Without A Police Permit

Stranger In A Strange Land

Consider The Black Widow Spider. It's A Timid Little Beastie, Useful And, For My Taste, The Prettiest Of The Arachnids, With Its Shiny, Patent-leather Finish And Its Red Hourglass Trademark. But The Poor Thing Has The Fatal Misfortune Of Possessing Enormously Too Much Power For Its Size. So Everybody Kills It On Sight.

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

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

Cute Friendship

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.

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

The Stars Incline, But Do Not Impel.

The Price Of Freedom Is The Willingness To Do Sudden Battle Anywhere, Any Time And With Utter Recklessness.

Price Of Freedom

I've Never Understood How God Could Expect His Creatures To Pick The One True Religion By Faith-it Strikes Me As A Sloppy Way To Run A Universe.

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

I Believe That Almost All Politicians Are Honest. For Every Bribed Alderman There Are Hundreds Of Politicians, Low Paid Or Not Paid At All, Doing Their Level Best Without Thanks Or Glory To Make Our System Work. If This Were Not True, We Would Never Have Gotten Past The Thirteen Colonies.

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

Cheops' Law: Nothing Ever Gets Built On Schedule Or Within Budget.

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

I Did The Only Really Brave Thing I Have Ever Done In My Life: I Inched Forward.

Women And Cats Will Do As They Please, And Men And Dogs Should Relax And Get Used To The Idea.

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

Patriotism Is Not 'my Country Right Or Wrong'; Patriotism Means Loving The Ideals For Which America Stands And Having The Courage To Speak Up When These Ideals Are Distorted For Personal Or Political Gain. The American Government Was Instituted To Be The Servant Of The People, Not Our Master.

But I Contend That The Disgusting Behavior Of Many Of Their Alleged 'holy Men' Relieves Us Of Any Intellectual Obligation To Take The Stuff Seriously. No Amount Of Sanctimonious Rationalization Can Make Such Behavior Anything But Pathological.

Between Being 'right' And Being Kind, I Know Which Way I Vote.

Taxes Are Not Levied For The Benefit Of The Taxed.

Stinky Says Women Should Be Obscene But Not Heard.

Gentlemen, Let's Go Row!

Anything Will Burn With Enough Gasoline And Dynamite.

Fulfillment In Life Is Loving A Good Woman And Killing A Bad Man.

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

Once There Was A Race, Quite Unlike The Human Race - Quite. I Have No Way Of Describing To You What They Looked Like Or How They Lived, But They Had One Characteristic You Can Understand: They Were Creative. The Creating And Enjoying Of Works Of Art Was Their Occupation And Their Reason For Being.

Liberty Is Never Unalienable; It Must Be Redeemed Regularly With The Blood Of Patriots Or It Always Vanishes. Of All The So-called Natural Human Rights That Have Ever Been Invented, Liberty Is Least Likely To Be Cheap And Is Never Free Of Cost.

Anyone Who Cannot Cope With Mathematics Is Not Fully Human. At Best, He Is A Tolerable Subhuman Who Has Learned To Wear His Shoes, Bathe, And Not Make Messes In The House.

Love Is That Condition In Which The Happiness Of Another Person Is Essential To Your Own.

Big Money Isn't Hard To Come By. All It Costs Is A Lifetime Of Single-minded Devotion To Acquiring It And Making It Grow Into More Money.

In A Society In Which It Is A Moral Offense To Be Different From Your Neighbor Your Only Escape Is To Never Let Them Find Out.

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

Once Upon A Time There Was A Martian Named Valentine Michael Smith.

Stranger In A Strange Land

Never Try To Have The Last Word. You Might Get It.

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)

I Counted To Ten Slowly, Using Binary Notation.

Any Priest Or Shaman Must Be Presumed Guilty Until Proved Innocent.

Get A Shot Off Fast. This Upsets Him Long Enough To Let You Make Your Second Shot Perfect.

Rarest Of All Is The Man Who Can And Does Reason At All Times, Quickly, Accurately, Inclusively, Despite Hope Or Fear Or Bodily Distress, Without Egocentric Bias Or Thalmic Disturbance, With Correct Memory, With Clear Distinction Between Fact, Assumption, And Non-fact.

You Have To Give An Editor Something To Change, Or He Gets Fretful. After He Pees In It, He Likes The Flavor Better, So He Buys It.

A Poet Who Reads His Verse In Public May Have Other Nasty Habits.

You Obviously Don't Know What An Old Man Of The Sea Great Wealth Is. It Is Not A Fat Purse And Time To Spend It. Its Owner Finds Himself Beset On Every Side, At Every Hour, Wherever He Goes, By Persistent Pleaders, Like Beggars In Bombay, Each Demanding That He Invest Or Give Away Part Of His Wealth. He Becomes Suspicious Of Honest Friendship--indeed Honest Friendship Is Rarely Offered Him; Those Who Could Have Been His Friends Are Too Fastidious To Be Jostled By Beggars, Too Proud To Risk Being Mistaken For One.

Note The Individual And Subjective Nature Of Each Case. No Two Are Alike And There Is No Reason To Expect Them To Be. Each Man Or Woman Must Find For Himself Or Herself That Occupation In Which Hard Work And Long Hours Make Him Or Her Happy. Contrariwise, If You Are Looking For Shorter Hours And Longer Vacations And Early Retirement, You Are In The Wrong Job. Perhaps You Need To Take Up Bank Robbing. Or Geeking In A Sideshow. Or Even Politics.

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.

A Pacifist Male Is A Contradiction In Terms. Most Self-described "pacifists" Are Not Pacific; They Simply Assume False Colors. When The Wind Changes, They Hoist The Jolly Roger.

Progress Isn't Made By Early Risers. It's Made By Lazy Men Trying To Find Easier Ways To Do Something.

Learning Isn't A Means To An End; It Is An End In Itself.

...i Am Opposed To All Attempts To License Or Restrict The Arming Of Individuals... I Consider Such Laws A Violation Of Civil Liberty, Subversive Of Democratic Political Institutions, And Self-defeating In Their Purpose.

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

Take Care Of The Cojones And The Frijoles Will Take Care Of Themselves. Try To Have Getaway Money - But Don't Be Fanatic About It.

Money Is A Powerful Aphrodisiac But Flowers Work Almost As Well.

I Came, I Saw, She Conquered." The Original Latin Seems To Have Been Garbled.

It Seems To Me That Any Law That Is Not Enforced And Can't Be Enforced Weakens All Other Laws.

Everybody Lies About Sex.

Women Seem To Have Almost Unlimited Capacity For Forgiveness. (since It Is Usually A Man Who Needs Forgiveness, This Must Be A Racial Survival Trait.

The Ordinary Bloke Will Not Voluntarily Pay For "art" That Leaves Him Unmoved--if He Does Pay For It, The Money Has To Be Conned Out Of Him, By Taxes And Such.

A Man Who Marries At My Age Isn't Taking A Wife, He's Indenturing A Nurse.

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

Little Girls, Like Butterflies, Need No Excuse.

Mom And Daughter

My Old Man Taught Me Two Things: 'mind Own Business' And 'always Cut Cards.'

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

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

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

Yield To Temptation. It May Not Pass Your Way Again.

Secrecy Is The Beginning Of Tyranny

Money Problems Can Always Be Solved By A Man Not Frightened By Them.

The Universe Never Did Make Sense; I Suspect It Was Built On Government Contract.

There Comes A Time In The Life Of Every Human When He Or She Must Decide To Risk ‘his Life, His Fortune And His Sacred Honor’ On An Outcome Dubious. Those Who Fail The Challenge Are Merely Overgrown Children, Can Never Be Anything Else.

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

Love Is What Still Goes On When You're Not Horny.

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.

In The Eighty Or Ninety Years I Have Given To This Subject, Trying To Trace Out The Meanderings Of Their Twisty Little Minds, The Only Thing That I Have Learned For Certain About Women Is That When A Gal Is Gonna, She's Gonna. All A Man Can Do Is Cooperate With The Inevitable.

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.

There Are Perhaps 5% Of The Population That Simply Can't Think. There Are Another 5% Who Can, And Do. The Remaining 90% Can Think, But Don't

Whenever Women Have Insisted On Absolute Equality With Men, They Have Invariably Wound Up With The Dirty End Of The Stick. What They Are And What They Can Do Makes Them Superior To Men, And Their Proper Tactic Is To Demand Special Privileges, All The Traffic Will Bear. They Should Never Settle Merely For Equality. For Women, "equality" Is A Disaster.

Beauty Is Not Diminished By Being Shared.

Never Insult Anyone By Accident.

The 3-legged Stool Of Understanding Is Held Up By History, Languages, And Mathematics. Equipped With Those Three You Can Learn Anything You Want To Learn. But If You Lack Any One Of Them You Are Just Another Ignorant Peasant With Dung On Your Boots.

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

The Extremely Tiny Fraction Who Think Regularly, Accurately, Creatively, And Without Self-delusion - In The Long Run, These Are The Only People Who Count.

It Was Equally Imperative That This Chain Of Reactions Should Always Tend To Dampen, To Die Out. It Must Not Build Up, Or The Uranium Mass Would Explode Within A Time Interval Too Short To Be Measured By Any Means Whatsoever. Nor Would There Be Anyone Left To Measure It.

If I Had Found Out Anything, It Was That They Could Print It Faster Than I Could Study It.

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

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.

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

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

I'm Not Trying To Frighten You, But Only A Fool Makes Predictions Based On Ignorance; I Am Not That Sort Of Fool.

Be Wary Of Strong Drink. It Can Make You Shoot At Tax Collectors... And Miss.

Churches Thrive On Martyrdom And Persecution.

Then I Glanced At The Ring On My Finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever And Ever. I Know Where I Came From—but Where Did All You Zombies Come From? I Felt A Headache Coming On, But A Headache Powder Is One Thing I Do Not Take. I Did Once—and You All Went Away. So I Crawled Into Bed And Whistled Out The Light. You Aren’t Really There At All. There Isn’t Anybody But Me—jane—here Alone In The Dark. I Miss You Dreadfully!

Being Right Too Soon Is Socially Unacceptable.

I Also Think There Are Prices Too High To Pay To Save The United States. Conscription Is One Of Them. Conscription Is Slavery, And I Don't Think That Any People Or Nation Has A Right To Save Itself At The Price Of Slavery For Anyone, No Matter What Name It Is Called. We Have Had The Draft For Twenty Years Now; I Think This Is Shameful. If A Country Can't Save Itself Through The Volunteer Service Of Its Own Free People, Then I Say: Let The Damned Thing Go Down The Drain!

Must Be Yearning Deep In Human Heart To Stop Other People From Doing As They Please.

Die Trying" Is The Proudest Human Thing.

Under Our System Every Voter And Officeholder Is A Man Who Has Demonstrated Through Voluntary And Difficult Service That He Places The Welfare Of The Group Ahead Of Personal Advantage.

Tilting At Windmills Hurts You More Than The Windmills.

Never Tease An Old Dog; He Might Have One Bite Left.

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

Like Every Living Thing Its Prime Characteristic Is A Blind, Unreasoned Instinct To Survive.

Stranger In A Strange Land

You Don’t Pay Back, You Pay Forward.

Touch Is The Most Fundamental Sense. A Baby Experiences It, All Over, Before He Is Born And Long Before He Learns To Use Sight, Hearing, Or Taste, And No Human Ever Ceases To Need It. Keep Your Children Short On Pocket Money But Long On Hugs

More People Worry Themselves To Death Than Bleed To Death.

I Believe In My Neighbors. I Know Their Faults And I Know That Their Virtues Far Outweigh Their Faults.

It Is Better To Copulate Than Never.

All Societies Are Based On Rules To Protect Pregnant Women And Young Children. All Else Is Surplusage, Excrescence, Adornment, Luxury, Or Folly Which Can - And Must - Be Dumped In Emergency To Preserve This Prime Function. As Racial Survival Is The Only Universal Morality, No Other Basic Is Possible. Attempts To Formulate A "perfect Society" On Any Foundation Other Than "women And Children First!" Is Not Only Witless, It Is Automatically Genocidal. Nevertheless, Starry-eyed Idealists (all Of Them Male) Have Tried Endlessly - And No Doubt Will Keep Trying.

Government! Three Fourths Parasitic And The Other Fourth Stupid Fumbling.

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

If You Wanted To Teach A Baby A Lesson, Would You Cut Its Head Off?

When The Citizens Of A Nation Will No Longer Volunteer To Defend It, Then It Is Probably Not Worth Saving. No Nation Has The Right To Survive With Conscript Troops, And In The Long Run, No Nation Ever Has.

In A Dilemma, It Is Helpful To Change Any Variable, Then Reexamine The Problem.

Learn To Say No—and To Be Rude About It When Necessary. Otherwise You Will Not Have Time To Carry Out Your Duty, Or To Do Your Own Work, And Certainly No Time For Love And Happiness. The Termites Will Nibble Away Your Life And Leave None Of It For You.

Happiness And Love

Butterflies Are Self Propelled Flowers.

The Supreme Irony Of Life Is That Hardly Anyone Gets Out Of It Alive.

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.

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

The Hardest Part Of Gaining Any New Idea Is Sweeping Out The False Idea Occupying That Niche.

At Least Once Every Human Should Have To Run For His Life, To Teach Him That Milk Does Not Come From Supermarkets, That Safety Does Not Come From Policemen, That 'news' Is Not Something That Happens To Other People. He Might Learn How His Ancestors Lived And That He Himself Is No Different--in The Crunch His Life Depends On His Agility, Alertness, And Personal Resourcefulness.

A Family Reunion Is An Effective Form Of Birth Control.

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.

There Are A Dozen Different Ways Of Delivering Destruction In Impersonal Wholesale, Via Ships Or Missiles Of One Sort Or Another, Catastrophes So Widespread, So Unselective That The War Is Over Because That Nation Or Planet Has Ceased To Exist. What We Do Is Entirely Different. We Make War As Personal As A Punch In The Nose. We Can Be Selective, Applying Precisely The Required Amount Of Pressure At The Specified Point At A Designated Time. We've Never Been Told To Go Down And Kill Or Capture All Left-handed Redheads In A Particular Area, But If They Tell Us To, We Can. We Will.

I Am Free, No Matter What Rules Surround Me. If I Find Them Tolerable, I Tolerate Them; If I Find Them Too Obnoxious, I Break Them.

Your Enemy Is Never A Villain In His Own Eyes.

It Takes Two To Create A Heaven, But Hell Can Be Accomplished By One.

Life Is Short, But The Years Are Long.

Women Talk When They Want To. Or Don't.

Sin Is Cruelty And Injustice, All Else Is Peccadillo. Oh, A Sense Of Sin Comes From Violating The Customs Of Your Tribe. But Breaking Custom Is Not Sin Even When It Feels So; Sin Is Wronging Another Person.

Men Are Not Potatoes!

Peace Is An Extension Of War By Political Means. Plenty Of Elbow-room Is Pleasanter -- And Much Safer.

Democracy Is Four Wolves And A Sheep Voting On Dinner.

Our Behavior Is Different. How Often Have You Seen A Headline Like This?--two Die Attempting Rescue Of Drowning Child. If A Man Gets Lost In The Mountains, Hundreds Will Search And Often Two Or Three Searchers Are Killed. But The Next Time Somebody Gets Lost Just As Many Volunteers Turn Out. Poor Arithmetic, But Very Human. It Runs Through All Our Folklore, All Human Religions, All Our Literature--a Racial Conviction That When One Human Needs Rescue, Others Should Not Count The Price.

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.

I Don't Trust A Man Who Talks About Ethics When He Is Picking My Pocket. But If He Is Acting In His Own Self-interest And Says So, I Have Usually Been Able To Work Out Some Way To Do Business With Him.

In This Complex World, The Scientific Method, And The Consequences Of The Scientific Method Are Central To Everything The Human Race Is Doing And To Wherever We Are Going.

Scientific Method

Cats Have No Sense Of Humor, They Have Terribly Inflated Egos, And They Are Very Touchy.

If Tempted By Something That Feels 'altruistic,' Examine Your Motives And Root Out That Self-deception. Then, If You Still Want To Do It, Wallow In It!

Progress Is Made By Lazy Men Looking For Easier Ways To Do Things.

Man Is Not A Rational Animal, He Is A Rationalizing Animal.

In Terms Of Morals There Is No Such Thing As ‘state.’ Just Men. Individuals. Each Responsible For His Own Acts.

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

Most 'scientists' Are Bottle Washers And Button Sorters.

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

You Can Sway A Thousand Men By Appealing To Their Prejudices Quicker Than You Can Convince One Man By Logic.

History Does Not Record Anywhere At Any Time A Religion That Has Any Rational Basis. Religion Is A Crutch For People Not Strong Enough To Stand Up To The Unknown Without Help. But, Like Dandruff, Most People Do Have A Religion And Spend Time And Money On It And Seem To Derive Considerable Pleasure From Fiddling With It.

Whoring Is Like Military Service...okay In The Upper Brackets, Not So Good Lower Down.

Military Service

Citizenship Is An Attitude, A State Of Mind, An Emotional Conviction That The Whole Is Greater Than The Part...and That The Part Should Be Humbly Proud To Sacrifice Itself That The Whole May Live.

Never Do Today What You Can Put Off Till Tomorrow If Tomorrow Might Improve The Odds.

Mighty Little Force Is Needed To Control A Man Whose Mind Has Been Hoodwinked; Contrariwise, No Amount Of Force Can Control A Free Man, A Man Whose Mind Is Free. No, Not The Rack, Not Fission Bombs, Not Anything - You Can't Conquer A Free Man; The Most You Can Do Is Kill Him.

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

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

His Older Self Had Taught His Younger Self A Language Which The Older Self Knew Because The Younger Self, After Being Taught, Grew Up To Be The Older Self And Was, Therefore, Capable Of Teaching.

The Ten Commandments Are For Lame Brains. The First Five Are Solely For The Benefit Of The Priests And The Powers That Be; The Second Five Are Half Truths, Neither Complete Nor Adequate.

The More You Love, The More You Can Love - And The More Intensely You Love.

Some Things, The More You Understand The More You Loathe Them.

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

The Mind's Ability To Rationalize It's Own Shortcomings Is Unlimited; I Am No Exception.

But, If There Ever Was A Time In History When "peace" Meant That There Was No Fighting Going On, I Have Been Unable To Find Out About It.

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

Trending Author

George H. W. Bush

Ernest Shackleton

George A. Moore

Madeleine Albright

Category