Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don’t know about you, tovarishch, but I am.
In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.
If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?
If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped—say with a stone ax—will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier.
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!
If I had had any sense, I'd have quit and taken a working job. The only trouble with that would be that I wouldn't have been working for the Old Man any longer. That made the difference. Not that he w...
I'm too much old-timer to be rude to a woman no matter what - they have so much of what we have none of.
I tried to dig out of the computer a call directory for Luna. But it was still sulking. I could not get it to list its own directory. So I tried some test problems on it. It insisted that 2 + 2 = 3.99...
I say ‘art’ advisedly, for art is undefined, undefinable, and without limits. I can use the word without fear of misusing it, for it has no exact meaning. There are as many meanings as there are artis...
I object to conscription the way a lobster objects to boiling water: it may be his finest hour but it’s not his choice.
I needed a space suit the way a pig needs a pipe organ.
I hope he’s just a scoundrel . . . because a saint can stir up ten times as much mischief as a scoundrel.
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
I am all that I grok.
Horace was a nice little guy who looked like one of his own baboons; he turned me over to a Doctor Vargas who was a specialist in exotic biologies--the same Vargas who was on the Second Venus Expediti...
Hell, was no military man; was computer technician who had bumbled into wrong field.
He knew vaguely that he did not want the nurse to die at that moment, even though it was certainly its right and possibly its obligation to do so.
Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed—to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience.
Good! the creature echoed. Doctor Nelson will be along in a minute. Feel like some breakfast? All four symbols in the query were in Smith’s vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard th...
Forgiveness and thanks go hand in hand.