""No man is an island — " Much as we may feel and act as Individuals, our race is —a single organism, always growing and branching —which must be pruned regularly to be healthy. This necessity need not be argued; anyone with eyes can see that any organism which grows without limit always dies in its own poisons. The only rational question is whether pruning is best done before or after birth. Being an incurable sentimentalist I favor the former of these methods —killing makes me queasy, even when it's a case of "He's dead and I'm alive and that's the way I wanted it to be." But this may be a matter of taste. Some shamans think that it is better to be killed in a war, or to die in childbirth, or to starve in misery, than never to have lived at all. They may be right. But I don't have to like it —and I don't."

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."

"Masturbation is cheap, clean, convenient, and free of any possibility of wrongdoing —and you don't have to go home in the cold. But it's lonely."

"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."

"If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait."

"Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy."

"All men are created unequal."

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

"A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate."

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

"Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me—death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way."

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

"I don’t think Father Hugo is any more mistaken than the most learned theologian and he might be closer to the truth. Jacob, I don’t think anyone knows Who’s in charge."

"Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive—and unpredictable."

"I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it’s better to laugh than cry."

"It’s impossible for a woman to lay it on too thick with a man. If you tell a man he’s eight feet tall and say it often enough, with your eyes wide and a throb in your voice, he’ll start stooping to go through seven-foot doors."

"When you’re rich, you don’t have friends; you just have endless acquaintances."

"We may eliminate death someday but I doubt if we’ll ever eliminate taxes."

"Between being ‘right’ and being kind, I know which way I vote."

"A man who marries at my age isn’t taking a wife, he’s indenturing a nurse."

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

"Fighting continued on a token basis, and the dead did not complain."

"What we think of as ‘Physical beauty’ is almost certainly a tag for a complex of useful survival characteristics. Smartness—intelligence—among them."

"From my point of view it is better to be alive and young again, and broke, than it is to be the richest corpse in Forest Lawn."

"“Going to dance at my wake?” “I don’t dance,” the lawyer answered, “but you tempt me to learn.”"

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."

"TANSTAAFL."

"Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good."

"I will accept the 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."

"A rational anarchist believes that concepts, such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame ... as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world ... aware that his efforts will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure."

"This matter of racial differences—or the nonsense notion of “racial equality”—had never been examined scientifically; there was too much emotion on both sides. No one wanted honest data…. Nevertheless, this confused matter of races would never be straightened out—because almost nobody wanted the truth."

"He tried to tell himself that no one is ever responsible for another person’s actions. He believed it, he tried to live by it. But he found that cold wisdom no comfort."

"He did not want Barbara ever to feel the deadening load of hopelessness that could—and had, all through history—turned chaste women into willing concubines. Much as he loved her, he had no illusions that Barbara was either angel or saint; the Sabine women had stood no chance and neither would she. “Death before dishonor!” was a slogan that did not wear well. In time, it changed to happy cooperation."

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

"“Why do you think this gossip is true?” “Uh…I heard it and checked around. Everybody knows it.” “So? Everybody knew the Earth was flat, at one time.”"

"Hugh shut up. He was thinking glumly that Ponse was not a villain. He was exactly like the members of every ruling class in history: honestly convinced of his benevolence and hurt if it was challenged."

"We are all free—to walk our appointed paths. Just as a stone is free to fall when you toss it into the air. No one is free in the abstract meaning you give the word."

"The concept of change baffled them."

"We have everything for a still; I stocked the items to build one if a war came along—not just for us but because liquor is money in any primitive society."

"You know that color does not matter to me. I want to know other things about a man. Is his word good? Does he meet his obligations? Does he do honest work? Is he brave? Will he stand up and be counted?"

"“It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person’s behavior. I spoke of myself as ‘responsible’ for this group, that was verbal shorthand. The most I can do—or you, or any leader—is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.”"

"“We’re going to die. Aren’t we?” “Yes.” “I thought so. Before morning?” “Oh, no! I feel sure we can live till noon.”"

"No government has yet been able to repeal natural laws, though they keep trying."

"“Mr. Farnham!” You think they are going to attack?” Her host shrugged. “The Kremlin doesn’t let me in on its secrets.”"

"Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is — so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group."

"Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow."

"Poddy’s greatest weakness—the really soft place in her head, she’s not too stupid otherwise—is her almost total inability to grasp that some people are as bad as they are. Evil. Poddy never has understood evil. Naughtiness is about as far as her imagination reaches."

"“Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do.” There must be a flaw in that, since I’ve always been taught that it is wrong to take the law in your own hands. But I can’t find the flaw and it sounds axiomatic, self-evident. Switch it around. If something is wrong for one person to do, can it possibly be made right by having a lot of people (a government) agree to do it together? Even unanimously? If anything is wrong, it is wrong—and vox populi can’t change it."

"I told him it was wrong, I said that he mustn’t take the law in his own hands. “What law?” he said. “There isn’t any law here. And you aren’t being logical, Pod. Anything that is right for a group to do is right for one person to do.”"

"In sober truth no person can ever be truly responsible for another human being. Each one of us faces up to the universe alone, and the universe is what it is and it doesn’t soften the rules for any of us—and eventually, in the long run, the universe always wins and takes all. But that doesn’t make it any easier when we try to be responsible for one another—as you have, as I have—and then look back and see how we could have done it better."