[J]uvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue--indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge a...
You’re not privileged to call me ‘Boss’; you’re not tax deductible.
Your business, son. Yes. Self. I must grok each cusp myself alone. And so must you . . . and so must each self. Thou art God. I don’t accept the nomination. You can’t refuse it. Thou art God and I am...
Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.
With just a touch more self confidence and a liberal helping of ignorance I could have been a famous evangelist.
What was grokking? He had been using the word for a week—and he didn’t grok it.
What a man doesn’t know he can’t spill if he is captured; neither drugs, nor torture, nor brainwash, nor endless lack of sleep can squeeze out a secret he doesn’t possess.
We organized First and Second Volunteer Defense Gunners of Free Luna-two regiments so that First could snub lowly Second and Second could be jealous of First.
We necessarily sift a great many pebbles, much sand, for each nugget—but the nuggets are the reward.
We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race—we are even developing an exact ethic for...
We always trotted everywhere at Camp Arthur Currie. I never did find out who Currie was, but he must have been a trackman.
Until a person, man or woman, has enjoyed this treasure bathed in the mutual bliss of minds linked as closely as bodies, that person is still as virginal and alone as if he has never copulated.
Unexpected discorporation was always rare on Mars; Martian taste in such matters called for life to be a rounded whole, with physical death taking place at the appropriate and selected instant. This a...
To be court-martialed—for any reason—is eight times as bad for an officer as for an enlisted man. Offenses which will get privates kicked out (maybe with lashes, possibly without) rate death in an off...
Thou art God'. It's not a message of cheer and hope. It's a defiance - and an unafraid, unabashed assumption of personal responsibility.
This school is based on the idea that a man who can think correctly will automatically behave morally—or
They flew her, Matt pointed out. Sure they did—and my hat’s off to them. But it takes heroes to fly a box as primitive as this and I’m not the hero type.
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...
There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat.
There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.