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 peopl...
Another bug hunt, boys. This one is a little different, as you know. Since they still hold prisoners of ours, we can't use a nova bomb on Klendathu --- so this time we go down, stand on it, hold it, t...
An infantryman can fight only if somebody else delivers him to his zone; in a way I suppose pilots are just as essential as we are.
An apostate scientist, a kidnapped scientist, a dull peasant, a two-headed monster, an apple-brained moron -- five knives, counting Joe-Jim as one; five brains, counting Joe-Jim as two and Bobo as non...
An air car was just landing in the garden by the pool and beings under it were complaining of injuries and indignities done them. Perhaps this was the trouble he could feel? Grasses were for walking o...
An Englishman and an Arab can learn to think each other’s thoughts, in the other’s language.
All right, all right, have it your own way! I can’t prove I’m right—so I must be wrong. Men!
Admittedly, what he had seen only the day before in this very room was just as intellectually stupefying as these later events—but the emotional impact was something else. A mouse was as much a miracl...
Acting per se, like all art, is a process of abstracting, of retaining only significant detail. But in impersonation any detail can be significant.
A man can face known danger. But the unknown frightens him. We
A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.
Hurry was not a concept that could be symbolized in the Martian language and therefore must be presumed to be unthinkable. Speed, velocity, simultaneity, acceleration, and other mathematical abstracti...
From George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra: Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
Doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later.
Contrary to some opinions, it is better to be a dead hero than a live louse. Dying is messy and inconvenient but even a louse dies someday no matter what he will do to stay alive and he is forever hav...
[He] stopped long enough to remind himself that this baby innocent was neither babyish nor innocent — was in fact sophisticated in a culture which he was beginning to realize, however dimly, was far i...
[A person], having no self-respect, needs and demands a show of public respect.
Yes, Boss?'Dorcas, the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, no-good parasite.'She yawned again. 'Everybody knows that.'Nevermind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when...
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 prop...
When, after a week, Jubal had had no other message, he sent a stat care of Ben's office: Whatthe hell are you doing? Ben's answer came back, somewhat delayed: Studying Martian and the rules forhopscot...