Background Image

...

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.

-Robert A. Heinlein

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There Ought Not To

Robert A. Heinlein

...

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.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Robert A. Heinlein

Waking A Person Unnecessarily Should Not Be Considered A Capital Crime. For A First Offense, That Is.

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

Boats And Ships Are Female Because They Are Beautiful, Lovable, Expensive And Unpredictable.

There Is An Old, Old Story About A Theologian Who Was Asked To Reconcile The Doctrine Of Divine Mercy With The Doctrine Of Infant Damnation. 'the Almighty,' He Explained, 'finds It Necessary To Do Things In His Official And Public Capacity Which In His Private And Personal Capacity He Deplores.

Autobiography Is Usually Honest But It Is Never Truthful.

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.

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.

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

There Will Always Be Survivors.

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

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

Never Underestimate The Power Of Human Stupidity.

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

Never Attempt To Teach A Pig To Sing; It Wastes Your Time And Annoys The Pig.

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

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.

A Fool Cannot Be Protected From His Folly. If You Attempt To Do So, You Will Not Only Arouse His Animosity But Also You Will Be Attempting To Deprive Him Of Whatever Benefit He Is Capable Of Deriving From Experience. Never Attempt To Teach A Pig To Sing; It Wastes Your Time And Annoys The Pig.

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.

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

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

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'.

Die Trying" Is The Proudest Human Thing.

Pacifism Is A Shifty Doctrine Under Which A Man Accepts The Benefits Of The Social Group Without Being Willing To Pay; And Claims A Halo For His Dishonesty.

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.

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

Spacemen Die If They Stay In One Place.

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

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.

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

Always Cut The Cards...and Smile When You Lose.

Violence Never Settles Anything Should Be Debated By The Ghosts Of Hitler And Stalin, With The City Fathers Of Carthage As Referees.

How Anybody Expects A Man To Stay In Business With Every Two-bit Wowser In The Country Claiming A Veto Over What We Can Say And Can't Say And What We Can Show And What We Can't Show - It's Enough To Make You Throw Up. The Whole Principle Is Wrong; It's Like Demanding That Grown Men Live On Skim Milk Because The Baby Can't Eat Steak.

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.

Specialisation Is For Insects!

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.

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

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

Love Your Country, But Never Trust Its Government.

...a Book Need Never Die And Should Not Be Killed; Books Were The Immortal Part Of Man.

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

The Greatest Productive Force Is Human Selfishness.

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

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

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

Love Is That Condition In Which The Happiness Of Another Person Is Essential To Your Own... Jealousy Is A Disease, Love Is A Healthy Condition. The Immature Mind Often Mistakes One For The Other, Or Assumes That The Greater The Love, The Greater The Jealousy.

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

Faith Strikes Me As Intellectual Laziness.

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.

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.

Secrecy Is The Keystone To All Tyranny. Not Force, But Secrecy And Censorship. When Any Government Or Church For That Matter, Undertakes To Say To Its Subjects, "this You May Not Read, This You Must Not Know," The End Result Is Tyranny And Oppression, No Matter How Holy The Motives. Mighty Little Force Is Needed To Control A Man Who Has Been Hoodwinked In This Fashion; Contrariwise, No Amount Of Force Can Control A Free Man, Whose Mind Is Free. No, Not The Rack Nor The Atomic Bomb, Not Anything. You Can't Conquer A Free Man; The Most You Can Do Is Kill Him.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

No Woman Ever Ages Beyond Eighteen In Her Heart.

Budget The Luxuries First.

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

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.

I Scrolled On Down To The Obituaries. I Usually Read The Obituaries First As There Is Always The Happy Chance That One Of Them Will Make My Day.

What Are The Facts? Again And Again And Again – What Are The Facts? Shun Wishful Thinking, Ignore Divine Revelation, Forget What “the Stars Foretell,” Avoid Opinion, Care Not What The Neighbors Think, Never Mind The Unguessable “verdict Of History” – What Are The Facts, And To How Many Decimal Places? You Pilot Always Into An Unknown Future; Facts Are Your Single Clue. Get The Facts!

Library Science Is The Key To All Science, Just As Mathematics Is Its Language - And Civilization Will Rise Or Fall, Depending On How Well Librarians Do Their Jobs.

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

The Police Of A State Should Never Be Stronger Or Better Armed Than The Citizenry. An Armed Citizenry, Willing To Fight, Is The Foundation Of Civil Freedom. That's A Personal Evaluation, Of Course.

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

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

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

If You Are Part Of A Society That Votes, Then Do So. There May Be No Candidates And No Measures You Want To Vote For ... But There Are Certain To Be Ones You Want To Vote Against. In Case Of Doubt, Vote Against. By This Rule You Will Rarely Go Wrong.

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

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

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

Darling, A True Lady Takes Off Her Dignity With Her Clothes And Does Her Whorish Best. At Other Times You Can Be As Modest And Dignified As Your Persona Requires.

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!'

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

Age Does Not Bring Wisdom... But It Does Give Perspective... And The Saddest Sight Of All Is To See, Far Behind You, Temptations You've Resisted.

Your Enemy Is Never A Villain In His Own Eyes.

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

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.

Liberty Is Never Unalienable, It Must Be Redeemed Regularly With The Blood Of Patriots Or It Always Vanishes.

Unalienable Rights

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.

Always Store Beer In A Dark Place.

A Family Reunion Is An Effective Form Of Birth Control.

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.

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.

An Armed Society Is A Polite Society.

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.

From Somewhere, Back In My Youth, Heard Prof Say, 'manuel, When Faced With A Problem You Do Not Understand, Do Any Part Of It You Do Understand, Then Look At It Again.' He Had Been Teaching Me Something He Himself Did Not Understand Very Well—something In Math—but Had Taught Me Something Far More Important, A Basic Principle.

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.

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.

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

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

Correct Morality Can Only Be Derived From What Man Is — Not From What Do-gooders And Well-meaning Aunt Nellies Would Like Him To Be.

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

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

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

When One Teaches, Two Learn.

Nursing Does Not Diminish The Beauty Of A Woman's Breasts; It Enhances Their Charm By Making Them Look Lived In And Happy.

Nothing Uses Up Alcohol Faster Than Political Argument.

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

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

There Was One Field In Which Man Was Unsurpassed; He Showed Unlimited Ingenuity In Devising Bigger And More Efficient Ways To Kill Off, Enslave, Harass, And In All Ways Make An Unbearable Nuisance Of Himself To Himself.

A Motion To Adjourn Is Always In Order.

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.

If Satan Should Ever Replace God He Would Find It Necessary To Assume The Attributes Of Divinity.

Formal Courtesy Between Husband And Wife Is Even More Important Than It Is Between Strangers.

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

Sin Is Cruelty And Injustice, All Else Is Peccadillo.

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.

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

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

If A Grasshopper Tries To Fight A Lawnmower, One May Admire His Courage But Not His Judgement.

I Think The Major Problem In Growing Up Is To Become Sophisticated Without Becoming Cynical.

It Seems To Me That The Secret Of True Happiness In Life Is To Know What You Are And Then Be Content To Be That, In Style, Head Up And Proud, And Not Yearn To Be Something Else.

Butterflies Are Self Propelled Flowers.

Life Is Short, But The Years Are Long.

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

Don't Tell Me Violence Doesn't Solve Anything. Look At Carthage.

Ability Is A Wonderful Thing, But Its Value Is Greatly Enhanced By Dependability. Ability Implies Repeatability And Accountability.

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

Work Is Not An End In Itself; There Must Always Be Time Enough For Love.

...more Than Six People Cannot Agree On Anything, Three Is Better And One Is Perfect For A Job That One Can Do. This Is Why Parliamentary Bodies All Through History, When They Accomplished Anything, Owed It To A Few Strong Men Who Dominated The Rest.

There Are No Dangerous Weapons; There Are Only Dangerous Men.

People Who Are Busy And Happy Don't Write Diaries; They Are Too Busy Living.

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.

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

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.

Ayn Rand Is A Bloody Socialist Compared To Me.

All Cats Are Not Gray After Midnight.

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

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

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 Do Today What You Can Put Off Till Tomorrow If Tomorrow Might Improve The Odds.

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

When It Don’t Rain, The Roof Don’t Leak; When It Rains, I Can’t Fix It Nohow.

Never Crowd Youngsters About Their Private Affairs - Sex Especially. When They Are Growing Up, They Are Nerve Ends All Over, And Resent (quite Properly) Any Invasion Of Their Privacy. Oh, Sure, They'll Make Mistakes - But That's Their Business, Not Yours. (you Made Your Own Mistakes, Did You Not?)

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.

Theology Is Never Any Help; It Is Searching In A Dark Cellar At Midnight For A Black Cat That Isn't There. Theologians Can Persuade Themselves Of Anything.

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.

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

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

Since When Was An Emotional Argument Won By Logic?

Straining At Gnats And Swallowing Camels Is A Required Course In Law Schools.

Have You Ever Noticed How Much They Look Like Orchids? Lovely!

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

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

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.

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

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

One Man's Theology Is Another Man's Belly Laugh.

Hate Always Sells Well, But For Repeat Trade And The Long Pull Happiness Is Sounder Merchandise.

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

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

Never Encourage A Man To Cook Breakfast; It Cause Him To Wonder If Women Are Necessary.

I'm Always Suspicious Of Disinterested Interest.

Belief Gets In The Way Of Learning.

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

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

The Commonest Weakness Of Our Race Is Our Ability To Rationalize Our Most Selfish Purposes.

Please Don't Invent A Debt That Does Not Exist, Or Next You Will Be Trying To Feel Gratitude - And That Is The Treacherous First Step Toward Complete Moral Degradation.

A "critic" Is A Man Who Creates Nothing.

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.

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.

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

Stranger In A Strange Land

Being Right Too Soon Is Socially Unacceptable.

Avoid Making Irrevocable Decisions While Tired Or Hungry.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Is No Way That Writers Can Be Tamed And Rendered Civilized. Or Even Cured.

Faith Strikes Me As Intellectual Laziness, But I Don't Argue With It - Especially As I Am Rarely In A Position To Prove That It Is Mistaken. Negative Proof Is Usually Impossible.

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.

The Stars Incline, But Do Not Impel.

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

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

Morals - All Correct Moral Laws - Derive From The Instinct To Survive. Moral Behavior Is Survival Behavior Above The Individual Level.

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

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

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."

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.

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. I Am Free Because I Know That I Alone Am Morally Responsible For Everything I Do.

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

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

The Bible Is Such A Gargantuan Collection Of Conflicting Values That Anyone Can Prove Anything From It.

Death Is An Old Friend; I Know Him Well. I Lived With Him, Ate With Him, Slept With Him; To Meet Him Again Does Not Frighten Me Death Is As Necessary As Birth, As Happy In Its Own Way.

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

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.

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.

If A Thing's Worth Doing, It's Worth Overdoing. (lazarus Long)

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

Secrecy Is The Beginning Of Tyranny

When He Kisses You He Isn't Doing Anything Else. You're His Whole Universe, And The Moment Is Eternal Because He Doesn't Have Any Plans And Isn't Going Anywhere. Just Kissing You ... It's Overwhelming.

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

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.

Never Pick Up A Stray Kitten . . . Unless You've Already Made Up Your Mind To Be Owned By It.

"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."

The Nice Thing About Citing God As An Authority Is That You Can Prove Anything You Set Out To Prove.

By The Data To Date, There Is Only One Animal In The Galaxy Dangerous To Man -- Man Himself. So He Must Supply His Own Indispensable Competition. He Has No Enemy To Help Him.

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

Trending Author

Rosalind Russell

Marcus Aurelius

Category