"There was this about him: he knew who I was, but he hadn’t remembered my name. Ron Cole had better things to think about than what name belonged with whom. A name was only a tag and a conversational gambit."

"I asked him, “Do you know the difference between nude and naked?” He shook his head. “Nude is artistic. Naked is defenseless.”"

"Anyone who says human nature can’t be changed is out of his head. To make it stick, he’s got to define human nature—and he can’t."

"Peace isn’t a stable condition, not for us. Maybe not for anything that lives."

"“That’s impossible. Isn’t it? Carlos?” Carlos’ mouth twisted. “Not if it’s being done.”"

"In a universe the size of ours almost anything that can happen, will."

"“Do you play games of chance?” “Emphatically yes. The process of living is a game of chance. To avoid chance is insanity.”"

"Gambling was safer than war. More fun, too. Best of all, it gave him better odds."

"I’d thought my way into this mess. I should be able to think my way out, shouldn’t I?"

"A sufficiently intelligent being will look about her, solve all questions, then cease activity."

"Ten thousand years wasn't enough...no lifetime was enough, unless you lived it in such a way as to make it enough."

"Time is a one-way street with no parking spaces. You just have to keep going."

"Writing is, therefore, both a form of compulsive behavior and, I frequently tell people, a self-induced form of mental illness. Those few writers who don’t start off by being a little nuts soon get that way as a direct result of their vocation."

"I knew it long ago: I’m a compulsive teacher, but I can’t teach. The godawful state of today’s education system isn’t what’s stopping me. I lack at least two of the essential qualifications. I cannot “suffer fools gladly.” The smartest of my pupils would get all my attention, and the rest would have to fend for themselves. And I can’t handle being interrupted. Writing is the answer. Whatever I have to teach, my students will select themselves by buying the book. And nobody interrupts a printed page."

"Nuclear is the safest power source we’ve got—with two exceptions, neither of which is being built. If some folk are terrified of unseen death by radiation, then let ’em deal with their own neuroses, instead of forcing us to stop building the atomic plants."

"It takes a lot of people to hold civilization together; some of us are only here to ask the right questions."

"In fantasy, more than in other forms of literature, the obligation is to teach something universally true about the human condition."

"Casual murder, casual suicide, casual crime. Why not? If alternate universes are a reality, then cause and effect are an illusion. The law of averages is a fraud. You can do anything, and one of you will, or did."

"“But there’s an old legend,” I said. “Once every hundred years the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clear as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won’t have to look at it.”"

"You don’t stop planning just because there’s no hope."

"Collaborations are unnatural. The writer is a jealous god. He builds his universe without interference. He resents the carping of mentally deficient critics, and the editor’s capricious demands for revisions. Let two writers try to make one universe, and their defenses get in the way."

"There aren’t many prizes for second place in battle."

"Government over large areas needs emotional ties. It also needs stability. Government by 50%-plus-one hasn’t enjoyed particularly stable politics—and it lasts only so long as the 50%-minus-one minority is willing to submit. Is heredity a rational way to choose leaders? It has this in its favor: the leader is known from an early age to be destined to rule, and can be educated to the job. Is that preferable to education based on how to get the job? Are elected officials better at governing, or at winning elections?"

"Heinlein spun off ideas at a terrific rate. Other writers picked them up…along with a distrust for arrogance combined with stupidity or ignorance, particularly in politicians."

"A sapient species doesn’t reach space unless the members learn to cooperate. They’ll wreck the environment, one way or another, war or straight libertarianism or overbreeding."

"Infantry, which means killing on foot and doesn’t have anything to do with children."

"It doesn’t take brains to mate!"

"WHY WARS DON’T STOP Then who can end a war? The leaders of embattled nations? They aren’t bleeding, except by proxy. It’s only their own imaginations that make war different from a complex chess game. The citizens at home? They are usually assured that they are winning, or that the enemy are inhuman monsters, or that to lose would be annihilation, or all of the above. Aside from all this, surrender is dishonorable. This is only partly an ethical judgment. It feels dishonorable. Nobody fakes a surrender reflex without cost. Surrender is losing a fight, and we aren’t wired to take that lightly. All of evolution is against losing casually, for trout as well as men. Wars continue because there is nobody who can end them. WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT You can’t do anything about it."

"Do you know the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel? If you try to read a graphic novel in the sauna, it comes apart. Glue melts; staples don’t."

"I’ll try anything that improves my education and is fun at the time."

"Any story that needs a critic to explain it, needs rewriting. A lucidly written, easily understood book is likely to escape critical attention."

"Many critics avoid science fiction and fantasy as demons avoid holy water. And why not? A science fiction work that needs explaining may or may not be trash, but the standard-issue critic is not likely to know the difference, and not likely to be able to explain it either."

"The standard-issue critic took English lit because physics was too hard for him!"

"I do not want all critics hanged alongside the lawyers and tax collectors. The good ones serve a purpose."

"Once you know about critics, you know about literature. Literature is whatever survives the critics."

"The test of time has at least the virtue of being unambiguous."

"Jovan knew about luck. Like wine: when luck turns sour, the whole barrel is sour."

"It’s damned embarrassing when you wake up with a girl and can’t remember her name."

"New technologies create new customs, new laws, new ethics, new crimes."

"Happiness is beautiful, all by itself. A happy person is beautiful, per se."

"So he was a little more callous than the rest of the world’s billions. But not much. Every voter had a bit of the organlegger in him. In voting the death penalty for so many crimes, the law makers had only bent to pressure from the voters. There was a spreading lack of respect for life, the evil side of transplant technology. The good side was a longer life for everyone. One condemned criminal could save a dozen deserving lives. Who could complain about that?"

"I see that you will never agree. I cannot help that. I can only read the evidence."

"You question my dispassionate judgment? Men have died for less!"

"I thought about it and got cold chills. Assassination is already a recognized branch of politics. If this got out—But that was the trouble; someone seemed to have thought of it already. If not, someone would. Someone always did."

"Chickens fly very well in low gravity."

"You should know by now, Hamilton. We bury everything. The sky is the enemy here. There’s meteors, radiation..spacecraft, for that matter."

"When nobody gets rich, they call that a recession."

"A machine has no mind to read; you never know when it’s going to betray you—"

"It does not destroy matter, which is reassuring. Rewriting one law of physics is worse than trying to eat one peanut."

"A thrint was master over every intelligent beast. This was the Powergiver’s primal decree, made before he made the stars. So said all of the twelve thrintun religions, though they fought insanely over other matters."