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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.

-Robert A. Heinlein

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The Ethics Of Sex

Robert A. Heinlein

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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.

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No Intelligent Man Has Any Respect For An Unjust Law.

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

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

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)

Secrecy Begets Tyranny.

Logic Is A Feeble Reed, Friend.

When Faced With A Problem You Do Not Understand, Do Any Part Of It You Do Understand, Then Look At It Again.

Violence, Naked Force, Has Settled More Issues In History Than Has Any Other Factor.

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

The Early Worm Deserves The Bird.

It Is A Truism That Almost Any Sect, Cult, Or Religion Will Legislate Its Creed Into Law If It Acquires The Political Power To Do So.

But Space Travel Can't Ease The Pressure On A Planet Grown Too Crowded Not Even With Today's Ships And Probably Not With Any Future Ships-because Stupid People Won't Leave The Slopes Of Their Home Volcano Even When It Starts To Smoke And Rumble. What Space Travel Does Do Is Drain Off The Best Brains: Those Smart Enough To See A Catastrophe Before It Happens, And With The Guts To Pay The Price-abandon Home, Wealth, Friends, Relatives, Everything-and Go. That's A Tiny Fraction Of One Percent. But That's Enough.

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

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

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

Life Is Short, But The Years Are Long.

The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth - A 6 Foot Plot Above Them.

If It Can't Be Expressed In Figures, It Is Not Science; It Is Opinion. It Has Long Been Known That One Horse Can Run Faster Than Another - But Which One? Differences Are Crucial.

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.

Being Generous Is Inborn; Being Altruistic Is A Learned Perversity. No Resemblance --

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Invention Is Something That Was "impossible" Up To Then That's Why Governments Grant Patents.

Random Chance Was Not A Sufficient Explanation Of The Universe---in Fact, Random Chance Was Not Sufficient To Explain Random Chance; The Pot Could Not Hold Itself.

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.

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.

From My Point Of View, A Great Deal Of Openly Expressed Piety Is Insufferable Conceit.

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.

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

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

Evolution Is A Process That Never Stops. Baboons Who Fail To Exhibit Moral Behavior Do Not Survive; They Wind Up As Meat For Leopards.

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

You Can Have Peace. Or You Can Have Freedom. Don't Ever Count On Having Both At Once.

I Counted To Ten Slowly, Using Binary Notation.

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

There Is No Such Thing As Luck; There Is Only Adequate Or Inadequate Preparation To Cope With A Statistical Universe.

There Are Two Ways Of Forming An Opinion. One Is The Scientific Method; The Other, The Scholastic. To The Scientific Mind, Experimental Proof Is All-important, And Theory Is Merely A Convenience In Description, To Be Junked When It No Longer Fits. To The Academic Mind, Authority Is Everything, And Facts Are Junked When They Do Not Fit Theory.

What A Wonderful World It Is That Has Girls In It!

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

Men Are Not Potatoes!

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.

But If You Didn't Have More Urgent Things To Do After Supper [in Boot Camp], You Could Write A Letter, Loaf, Gossip, Discuss The Myriad Mental Shortcomings Of Sergeants And, Dearest Of All, Talk About The Female Of The Species (we Became Convinced That There Was No Such Creatures, Just Mythology Created By Inflamed Imaginations - One Boy In Our Company Claimed To Have Seen A Girl, Over At Regimental Headquarters; He Was Unanimously Judged A Liar And A Braggart).

It’s Not Enough To Be Able To Lie With A Straight Face; Anybody With Enough Gall To Raise On A Busted Flush Can Do That. The First Way To Lie Artistically Is To Tell The Truth — But Not All Of It. The Second Way Involves Telling The Truth, Too, But Is Harder: Tell The Exact Truth And Maybe All Of It…but Tell It So Unconvincingly That Your Listener Is Sure You Are Lying.

It's A Long Story. Want A Refill?" "no, Let's Start The Steak. Where's The Button?" "right Here." "well, Push It." "me? You Offered To Cook." "ben Caxton, I Will Lie Here And Starve Before I Will Get Up To Push A Button Six Inches From Your Finger" "as You Wish." He Pressed The Button. "but Don't Forget Who Cooked Dinner.

Talking With A Martian Is Like Talking With An Echo. You Don't Get Argument But You Don't Get Results.

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

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

The Faith In Which I Was Brought Up Assured Me That I Was Better Than Other People; I Was Saved, They Were Damned.... Our Hymns Were Loaded With Arrogance - Self-congratulation On How Cozy We Were With The Almighty And What A High Opinion He Had Of Us, What Hell Everybody Else Would Catch Come Judgment Day.

Congratulations

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.

But Goodness Alone Is Never Enough. A Hard, Cold Wisdom Is Required For Goodness To Accomplish Good. Goodness Without Wisdom Always Accomplishes Evil.

Faith Is Intellectual Laziness.

Intellectual Laziness

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

A Little More Money Won't Do You Any Good - Because Daughters Can Use Up Ten Percent More Than A Man Can Make In Any Normal Occupation, Regardless Of The Amount.

Gratitude Is A Euphemism For Resentment.

If You Don't Like Yourself, You Can't Like Other People. -- Lazarus Long.

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

Democracy Can Survive Anything Except Democrats

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.

To Stay Young Requires Unceasing Cultivation Of The Ability To Unlearn Old Falsehoods.

May You Live As Long As You Wish And Love As Long As You Live.

The Universe Was A Silly Place At Best...but The Least Likely Explanation For It Was The No-explanation Of Random Chance, The Conceit That Abstract Somethings 'just Happened' To Be Atoms That 'just Happened' To Get Together In Ways Which 'just Happened' To Look Like Consistent Laws And Some Configurations 'just Happened' To Possess Self-awareness And That Two 'just Happened' To Be The Man From Mars And A Bald-headed Old Coot With Jubal Inside.

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

Brainpower Is The Scarcest Commodity And The Only One Of Real Value.

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.

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

It Is A Bad Sign When The People Of A Country Stop Identifying Themselves With The Country And Start Identifying With A Group. A Racial Group. Or A Religion. Or A Language. Anything, As Long As It Isn't The Whole Population.

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.

The Most Important Lesson In The Writing Trade Is That Any Manuscript Is Improved If You Cut Away The Fat.

Every Time We Killed A Thousand Bugs At A Cost Of One M.i. It Was A Net Victory For The Bugs. We Were Learning, Expensively, Just How Efficient A Total Communism Can Be When Used By A People Actually Adapted To It By Evolution; The Bug Commisars Didn't Care Any More About Expending Soldiers Than We Cared About Expending Ammo. Perhaps We Could Have Figured This Out About The Bugs By Noting The Grief The Chinese Hegemony Gave The Russo-anglo-american Alliance; However The Trouble With 'lessons From History' Is That We Usually Read Them Best After Falling Flat On Our Chins.

One Should Not Attend Even The End Of The World Without A Good Breakfast.

End Of The World

Being Sorry Won't Get You Into Heaven. Get Happy, Son. Get That Old Spring Into Your Step And Stay On Your Toes.

Working Because You Want To Is The Best Sort Of Play.

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

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

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

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

Anything Free Costs Twice As Much In The Long Run Or Turns Out Worthless.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

One Might Define Adulthood As The Age At Which A Person Learns That He Must Die ...and Accepts His Sentence Undismayed.

The Greatest Fallacy Of Democracy Is That Everyone's Opinion Is Worth The Same.

Always Store Beer In A Dark Place.

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.

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.

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

Marriage Is A Psychological Condition, Not A Civil Contract And A License. Once A Marriage Is Dead, It Is Dead, And It Begins To Stink Faster Than A Dead Fish.

Moving Parts In Rubbing Contact Require Lubrication To Avoid Excessive Wear. Honorifics And Formal Politeness Provide Lubrication Where People Rub Together. Often The Very Young, The Untravelled, The Naive, The Sophisticated Deplore These Formalities As 'empty,' 'meaningless,' Or 'dishonest,' And Scorn To Use Them. No Matter How 'pure' Their Motives, They Thereby Throw Sand Into Machinery That Does Not Work Too Well At Best.

It's A Man's Business To Be What He Is, And To Be It In Style.

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.

The First Principle Of Freedom Is The Right To Go To Hell In Your Own Handbasket.

God Is Omnipotent, Omniscient, And Omnibenevolent - It Says So Right Here On The Label. If You Have A Mind Capable Of Believing All Three Of These Attributes Simultaneously, I Have A Wonderful Bargain For You. No Checks, Please. Cash And In Small Bills.

As It Says In Bible, God Fights On Side Of Heaviest Artillery.

The Hardest Part About Gaining Any New Idea Is Sweeping Out The False Idea Occupying That Niche. As Long As That Niche Is Occupied, Evidence And Proof And Logical Demonstration Get Nowhere. But Once The Niche Is Emptied Of The Wrong Idea That Has Been Filling It:; Once You Can Honestly Say, "i Don't Know", Then It Becomes Possible To Get At The Truth.

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

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

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

The Human Race Divides Politically Into Those Who Want People To Be Controlled And Those Who Have No Such Desire.

The Shamans Are Forever Yacking About Their Snake Oil Miracles. I Prefer The Real Mccoy, A Pregnant Woman.

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.

If Men Were The Automatons That Behaviorists Claim They Are, The Behaviorist Psychologists Could Not Have Invented The Amazing Nonsense Called 'behaviorist Psychology.'

Specialization Is For Insects.

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.

You Have Attributed Conditions To Villainy That Simply Result From Stupidity.

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.

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

The Stars Incline, But Do Not Impel.

The Marks Won't Listen If It's Free.

A Slave Cannot Be Freed, Save He Do It Himself. Nor Can You Enslave A Free Man; The Very Most You Can Do Is Kill Him!

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

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.

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

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

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

Responsibility Cannot Be Shared.

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

The Country And Culture Commonly Known As "america" Had Had A Badly Split Personality All Through Its History. Its Overt Laws Were Almost Always Puritanical For A People Whose Covert Behavior Tended To Be Rabelaisian; Its Major Religions Were All Apollonian In Varying Degrees---its Religious Revivals Were Often Hysterical In A Fashion Almost Dionysian.

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

Writing Is Not Necessarily Something To Be Ashamed Of, But Do It In Private And Wash Your Hands Afterwards.

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

'savage' Describes A Cultural Condition, Not A Degree Of Intelligence.

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

There Ought Not To Be Anything In The Whole Universe That Man Can't Poke His Nose Into-that's The Way We're Built And I Assume That There's Some Reason For That.

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.

I Wanted The Feeling Of Romance And The Sense Of Wonder I Had Known As A Kid. I Wanted The World To Be What They Had Promised Me It Was Going To Be - Instead Of The Tawdry, Lousy Fouled-up Mess It Is.

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

It's Amazing How Much 'mature Wisdom' Resembles Being Too Tired.

A Dying Culture Invariably Exhibits Personal Rudeness. Bad Manners. Lack Of Consideration For Others In Minor Matters. A Loss Of Politeness, Of Gentle Manners, Is More Significant Than Is A Riot.

You Do Not Truly Own Anything That You Can't Carry In Both Arms At A Dead Run

Democracy Is Based On The Assumption That A Million Men Are Wiser Than One Man. How's That Again? I Missed Something.

Democracy Can't Work. Mathematicians, Peasants, And Animals, That's All There Is - So Democracy, A Theory Based On The Assumption That Mathematicians And Peasants Are Equal, Can Never Work. Wisdom Is Not Additive; Its Maximum Is That Of The Wisest Man In A Given Group.

It Is Impossible For A Man To Love His Wife Whole Heartedly Without Loving All Women Somewhat. I Suppose That The Converse Must Be True Of Women.

An Armed Man Need Not Fight.

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

God Created Men To Test The Souls Of Women.

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

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!'

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

If You Happen To Be One Of The Fretful Minority Who Can Do Creative Work, Never Force An Idea; You'll Abort It If You Do. Be Patient And You'll Give Birth To It When The Time Is Ripe. Learn To Wait.

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Remember Though, Your Best Weapon Is Between Your Ears And Under Your Scalp -provided It's Loaded.

A Brute Kills For Pleasure. A Fool Kills From Hate.

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

Any Government Will Work If Authority And Responsibility Are Equal And Coordinate. This Does Not Insure “good” Government, It Simply Insures That It Will Work. But Such Governments Are Rare — Most People Want To Run Things, But Want No Part Of The Blame. This Used To Be Called The “backseat Driver” Syndrome.

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.

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

[t]here Seems To Have Been An Actual Decline In Rational Thinking. The United States Had Become A Place Where Entertainers And Professional Athletes Were Mistaken For People Of Importance. They Were Idolized And Treated As Leaders; Their Opinions Were Sought On Everything And They Took Themselves Just As Seriously-after All, If An Athlete Is Paid A Million Or More A Year, He Knows He Is Important ... So His Opinions Of Foreign Affairs And Domestic Policies Must Be Important, Too, Even Though He Proves Himself To Be Ignorant And Subliterate Every Time He Opens His Mouth.

A Society That Gets Rid Of All Its Troublemakers Goes Downhill.

Only A Sadistic Scoundrel-or A Fool-tells The Bald Truth On Social Occasions.

The Less Respect An Older Person Deserves The More Certain He Is To Demand It From Anyone Younger.

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Anyone Who Considers Protocol Unimportant Has Never Dealt With A Cat.

Anything Free Is Worth What You Pay For It.

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

Free Will Is A Golden Thread Running Through The Frozen Matrix Of Fixed Events.

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

Cute Friendship

Teaching Causes People To Go Into Situations From Which They Cannot Escape, Except By Thinking. Do Not Handicap Children By Making Their Lives Easy.

It's Better To Copulate Than Not.

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.

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.

Never Appeal To A Man's 'better Nature.' He May Not Have One. Invoking His Self-interest Gives You More Leverage.

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

Self Awareness Is Not Just A Bunch Of Amino Acids Bumping Together.

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

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

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

How Can You Argue With A Woman Who Won't?

There Are Hidden Contradictions In The Minds Of People Who "love Nature" While Deploring The "artificialities" With Which "man Has Spoiled Nature.'" The Obvious Contradiction Lies In Their Choice Of Words, Which Imply That Man And His Artifacts Are Not Part Of "nature" : But Beavers And Their Dams Are.

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

Of All The Creatures On This Planet None Is More Dangerous Than A Human Being.

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

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

Random Chance Is Not Sufficient To Explain Random Chance. ~jubal Harshaw

There Were Many, Many Times Thereafter That Don Regretted Having Enlisted - But So Has Every Man Who Ever Volunteered For Military Service.

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.

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.

A Woman Is Not Property, And Husbands Who Think Otherwise Are Living In A Dreamworld.

Widows Are Far Better Than Brides. They Don't Tell, They Won't Yell, They Don't Swell, They Rarely Smell, And They're Grateful As Hell.

Luck Is A Tag Given By The Mediocre To Account For The Accomplishments Of Genius.

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

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.

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

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

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

Ignorance Is Curable, Stupid Is Forever.

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

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.

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.

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

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