20 quotes
Politics is nothing but common action to secure more favorable living conditions.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
A planet could take pretty good care of itself, he thought, if people would only leave it alone.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
For each man the world ends when he dies.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.
A Slave is a Slave (1962)
“Bad luck!” Brannad Klav snorted. “That’s the standing excuse of every incompetent!”
The Complete Paratime (1947)
Nobody will admit his own mental inferiority, even to himself.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
He’d seen theocracies all over paratime, and liked none of them; priests in political power usually made themselves insufferable, worse than any secular despotism.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
A religious war, the vilest form an essentially vile business can take.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
He had always suspected that beauty was the real feminine religion, from the willingness of its devotees to submit to martyrdom for it.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
Very high on the I love Rylla, reasons why list was the fact that the girl had a brain and wasn’t afraid to use it.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
Keep a government poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master.
Colonel Andrew Jackson Hickock in Lone Star Planet (1958)
English is the product of a Norman warrior trying to make a date with an Anglo-saxon bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.
Fuzzy Sapiens (1964)
Young man,the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when someone says something you don't understand ,don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What DO you mean Lord Trask?
Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.
Lone Star Planet (1958)
You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol - or he'll try to eat the one you gave him!
A Slave is a Slave (1962)
I’ve always wondered whether the theory of the divine right of kings was invented by the kings, to establish their authority over the people, or by the priests, to establish their authority over the kings. It works about as well one way as the other.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
We define people as criminals when they suffer from psychological aberrations of an antisocial character, usually paranoid—excessive egoism, disregard for the rights of others, inability to recognize the social necessity for mutual cooperation and confidence.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
They are people who believe in only one god, and then they believe that the god they worship is the only true one, and all others are false, and finally they believe that the only true god must be worshiped in only one way, and that those who worship otherwise are vile monsters who should be killed.
The Complete Paratime (1947)
Oh, he won't think of it in those terms. He'll be preventing me from sabotaging the Emancipation. He doesn't want to wait three generations; he wants to free them at once. Everything has to be at once for six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age.
A Slave is a Slave (1962)
There were dead infantry all along the road, mostly killed from behind. Another case of cowardice carrying its own penalty; infantry who stood against cavalry had a chance, often a good one, but infantry who turned tail and ran had none. He didn’t pity them a bit.
The Complete Paratime (1947)