Great Throughts Treasury

"I need not have worried about being naked; no one seemed to notice... which irked me. Gentleman should at least leer."

"I needed a space suit the way a pig needs a pipe organ."

"I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it."

"I never learned from a man who agreed with me."

"I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape."

"I pity the poverty of your wealth."

"I refuse to grow younger. I came by my decrepitude the hard way and I propose to enjoy it."

"I said that "Patriotism" is a way of saying "Women and children first." And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely. I want to tell about one such man. He wore no uniform and no one knows his name, or where he came from; all we know is what he did."

"I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day."

"I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code--monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth--then fiddle with details...even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight!"

"I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945. Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots."

"I suspect that our race's tragedy has been played endless times. It may be that an intelligent race has to expand right up to its disaster point to achieve what is needed to break out of its planet and reach for the stars. It may always -- or almost always -- be a photo finish, with the outcome uncertain to the last moment. Just as it is with us. It may take endless wars and unbearable population pressure to force-feed a technology to the point where it can cope with space. In the universe, space travel may be the birth pangs of an otherwise dying race. A test. Some races pass, some fail..."

"I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious."

"I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea."

"I think the major problem in growing up is to become sophisticated without becoming cynical."

"I think you have missed the most alarming symptom of all. This one I shall tell you. But go back and search for it. Examine it. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms as you have named... But a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a riot."

"I told you that juvenile 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 of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be, a juvenile delinquent."

"I told you that 'juvenile 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 of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents?people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail."

"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 = 3.99999999999999999999999... When I tried to get it to admit that 4 = 2 + 2, it became angry and claimed that 4 = 3.141592653589793238462643383279... So I gave up."

"I used to think I was serving humanity?and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases Jubal Harshaw."

"I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day."

"I waited. Women talk when they want to. Or don't."

"I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort. Riots of course - but I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking way at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial - but those things are obvious; all the histories list them."

"I want to spit back at a camel and ask him what he's so sour about. Maybe camels are the real 'Old Ones' on this planet... and that what is wrong with the place."

"I want you to worry yourself sick before a drop, so that you can be unruffled when the trouble starts."

"I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seem?d always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is."

"I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin."

"I was just pulling your leg and it came off in my hand."

"I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter."

"I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers... It is an invitation to think -- not to believe."

"I was not in bad health (aside from a cumulative hangover), I was still on the right side of thirty by a few days, and I was far from being broke. No police were looking for me, nor any husbands, nor any process servers; there was nothing wrong that a slight case of amnesia would not have cured. But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer. If I sound like a man with an acute case of self-pity, you are correct. There must have been well over two billion people on this planet in worse shape than I was. Nevertheless, I was looking for the Door into Summer."

"I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey."

"I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing."

"I was too busy to oblige them by dying just now."

"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 am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."

"I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not"

"I wonder how harmless such people are? To what extent civilization is retarded by the laughing jackasses, the empty-minded belittlers?"

"I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces - with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything now."

"I?m not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool."

"I?ve been broke even oftener than I?ve been wealthy. Of the two, being broke is more interesting, as a man who doesn?t know where his next meal is coming from is never bored. He may be angry or several other things?but not bored. His predicament sharpens his thoughts, spurs him into action, adds zest to his life, whether he knows it or not."

"I?ve been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they don?t give kissing their whole attention. They can?t. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus?or their chances of making the gal?or their own techniques in kissing?or maybe worry about jobs, or money, or will husband or papa or the neighbors catch on. Mike doesn?t have technique... but when Mike kisses you he isn?t doing anything else. You?re his whole universe... and the moment is eternal because he doesn?t have any plans and isn?t going anywhere. Just kissing you."

"I?ve never been able to understand ?faith? myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones ? by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether a universe or a smaller one."

"I?ve never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith?it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe."

"If "everybody knows" such-and-such, then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one."

"If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgment."

"If a person wants to take his own life, it is his privilege."

"If a thing is sinful on Sunday, it is sinful on Friday."

"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."

"If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as worship."

"If I don?t start having service I?m going to swap you all for a dog and shoot the dog."