"He shut up, realizing that grim old Mother Nature, red of tooth and claw, invariably punished damfools who tried to ignore Her or to repeal Her ordinances; he need not interfere."

"A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld."

"He enjoyed it, for every hour in school was an hour sitting down doing nothing harder than reading. Before and after school he had to do chores on his family’s farm, which he hated, as they were what was known as “honest work” — meaning hard, dirty, inefficient, and ill-paid — and also involved getting up early, which he hated even worse."

"That was encouraging; a person who can read and write and has a head for math can learn anything she needs to know."

"A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future."

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

"Age does not bring wisdom. Often it merely changes simple stupidity into arrogant conceit. Its only advantage, so far as I have been able to see, is that it spans change. A young person sees the world as a still picture, immutable. An old person has had his nose rubbed in changes and more changes and still more changes so many times that he knows it is a moving picture, forever changing. He may not like it — probably doesn’t; I don’t — but he knows it’s so, and knowing it is the first step in coping with it."

"Progress doesn't come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."

"Whores perform the same function as priests, Ira, but far more thoroughly."

"They did ask, sometimes, and accepted my decision without argument. But I could see that they did not always believe me. That pleased me; they were starting to think for themselves — didn’t matter if they were wrong."

"Llita was well above average smart but suffered from the democratic fallacy: the notion that her opinion was as good as anyone’s — while Joe suffered from the aristocratic fallacy: He accepted the notion of authority in opinion."

"If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion."

"All men are created unequal."

"Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."

"I learned centuries back that there is no privacy in any society crowded enough to need IDs. A law guaranteeing privacy simply insures that bugs — microphones and lenses and so forth — are that much harder to spot."

"Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn — when they do, which isn't often — on their own, the hard way."

"“Common sense?” “Son, that phrase is self-contradictory. ‘Sense’ is never ‘common.’”"

"The purpose of my government is never to do good, but simply to refrain from doing evil."

"Don’t ask me why. It was Navy policy and therefore did not have a reason."

"Whoring is like military service, Ira — okay in the upper brackets, not so good lower down."

"“I'm still learning English. By the naturalistic method the way a child learns his milk language. No grammar, no syntax, no dictionary — just listen and talk and read it. Acquire new words by context. By that method I acquired a feeling that ‘love' means the shared ecstasy that can be attained through sex. Is that right?” “Son, I hate to say this — because, if you've been reading a lot of English, I see how you reached that opinion — but you are one hundred percent wrong.”"

"Respect for laws is a pragmatic matter. Women know this instinctively; that’s why they are all smugglers. Men often believe — or pretend — that the “Law” is something sacred, or at least a science — an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments."

"Half the battle with any culture is knowing its taboos."

"“She loved them,” said Minerva. “Yes, she did, dear, by the exact definition of love. Llita placed their welfare and happiness ahead of her own.”"

"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent."

"Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect."

"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."

"All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can — and must — be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly — and no doubt will keep on trying."

"It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier."

"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."

"History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of."

"Oh, I have strong opinions, but a thousand reasoned opinions are never equal to one case of diving in and finding out. Galileo proved that and it may be the only certainty we have."

"Security people always spy on their bosses; they can’t help it, it’s a syndrome that goes with the job."

"There’s no virtue in being old, it just takes a long time."

"“Then you believe in an afterlife?” “Slow up! I don’t ‘believe’ in anything. I know certain things — little things, not the Nine Billion Names of God — from experience. But I have no beliefs. Belief gets in the way of learning."

"I spent my boyhood the way every boy does — trying to keep my elders from finding out what I was up to."

"Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig."

"Lazarus expressed a rhetorical and physiologically improbable wish."

"Do not ask why; it was no more subject to rational explanation than is any other branch of theology."

"But David, like all true geniuses, paid only pragmatic attention to rules made by other people — he obeyed the Eleventh Commandment and never got caught."

"A capsule description of most human “progress”: By the time you learn how, it’s too late."

"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."

"‘Put not your faith in princes,’ Ira; since they don’t produce, they always steal."

"In the first place, very little thinking was ever done in English; it is not a language suited to logical thought. Instead, it’s an emotive lingo beautifully adapted to concealing fallacies. A rationalizing language, not a rational one."

"If there is a purpose in life more important than two people cooperating in making a baby, all the philosophers in history haven’t been able to find it."

"Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth — but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three."

"Every so often some idiot tries to abolish marriage. Such attempts work as well as repealing the law of gravity, making pi equal to three point zero, or moving mountains by prayer."

"Latin is majestic, especially when you don’t understand it."

"Privacy is as necessary as company; you can drive a man crazy by depriving him of either."

"A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe."