The verdict to be passed on the third planet around Sol was never in doubt.
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – som...
The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay.
The fact is I am a compulsive reader. Thirty-five cents’ worth of Gold Medal Original will put me right to sleep. Or Perry Mason. But I’ll read the ads in an old Paris-Match that has been used to wrap...
The bugs are not like us. The Pseudo-Arachnids aren’t even like spiders. They are arthropods who happen to look like a madman’s conception of a giant intelligent spider, but their organization, psycho...
That’s what I was trying to find out when we were rushed off on this damned safari. They have unusual intestinal flora and it may have something to do with that. But I think it has to do with the fact...
Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down h...
She taught me to love by loving me, and I learned—rather slowly; I wasn’t too good a pupil, being set in my ways and lacking her natural talent. But I did learn. Learned that supreme happiness lies in...
People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy mor...
Nope. Gadflies such as yourself are utterly necessary. Nor am I opposed to ‘turning the rascals out’—it’s usually the soundest rule of politics. But it’s well to take a look at what new rascals you ar...
I’m not suggesting anything. People get hurt every day. This matter must be cleared up, Joseph, for everybody. The greatest good of the greatest number, as you are so fond of quoting.
If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I've never heard of it.
If change threatens you, you become conservative in self-defense. If it thrills you, you become liberal in self-liberation. He says the Threateneds are frequently more successful in the short run, bec...
If a word for a concept isn’t in a language, then its culture simply doesn’t have the referent the missing word would symbolize. Oh, twaddle, Stinky! Animals fight—and ants even conduct wars. Are you...
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. 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 a...
I think you were telling the truth, Jill. But a dream is a true experience of a sort and so is a hypnotic delusion.
Human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let...
Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.
Dorcas, for the last twenty or thirty years I’ve been a worthless, useless, no-good parasite. She nodded and yawned again. Everybody knows that. Never mind the flattery. There comes a time in every ma...
Don’t bawl over Ben—not in my presence. The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death . . . and that we are all in for—if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most.