Screenwriters From The United States

"I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people—and parasites."

"I think that you are immune to the temptations of religion. If you are not, I cannot help you, any more than I could keep you from acquiring a drug habit. A religion is sometimes a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong—and you are strong. The great trouble with religion—any religion—is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask in at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason—but one cannot have both."

"Self-pity, he said, is the most demoralizing of all vices."

"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such 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 is a riot."

"It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws."

"“So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts.” “Elementary. Go on.” “Well…high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way—even though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation.”"

"It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population."

"Young Daniel Shipstone saw at once that the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhere—in sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension. Those who spoke of “energy scarcity” and of “conserving energy” simply did not understand the situation. The sky was “raining soup”; what was needed was a bucket in which to carry it."

"Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers."

"All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts; those who know this and those who do not."

"“Religious” = “absolute belief without proof.”"

"“Georges, I don’t know much about California politics—” “My dear, no one knows much about California politics, including California politicians.”"

"You’re not a stranger; you’re an old friend we haven’t known very long."

"I had hit him in his male pride. Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically."

"Marriages are arranged in heaven but the bills must be paid here on earth."

"But I do not willingly involve us in nationalistic wars; the side of the angels is seldom self-evident."

"Stupid fools look just as good as military geniuses until the fighting starts."

"Friday, brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value. Any human organization can be rendered useless, impotent, a danger to itself, by selectively removing its best minds while carefully leaving the stupid ones in place."

"Friday, don’t despise assassins indiscriminately. As with any tool, merit or demerit lies in how it is used."

"My mistake. My inexcusable mistake, as a con man never stops being a con man; he can’t. But I suffered from a will to believe, a defect of character that I thought I had rooted out. I was mistaken."

"There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that’s philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that’s science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy’s Law, sometimes offset in part by Brewster’s Factor: that’s engineering."

"The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth, One Meter Wide and Two Meters Long."

"Don’t worry about it. There is less here than meets the eye."

"As I once heard Andrew—that’s my disappearing brother—say: ‘Life consist in accommodating oneself to the Universe.’ Although the rest of our family has never taken that view. We believe if forcing the Universe to accommodate itself to us. It’s all a question of which one is to be master."

"Here is the wisdom of the ages: Men rule but women decide."

"“It is the most indecent outfit I’ve ever seen, with no other purpose than to excite lewd, libidinous, lascivious, licentious, lecherous, lustful longings in the loins of Lotharios.” “Isn’t that the purpose of clothing?” “Well...aside from protection—yes.”"

"One can’t expect logic from males; they think with their testicles and act from their emotions."

"The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it."

"As for population, every major shortcoming of our native planet could be traced to one cause: too many people, not enough planet."

"All humans are created unequal. You are bigger and stronger than Pop; I am bigger and stronger than Hilda. I have the least years of experience; Pop has the most. Pop is a super-genius...but he concentrates so hard that he forgets to eat...unless he has a nursemaid to watch him—as Mama did, as I did, as Hilda now does. You, sir, are the all-around most competent man I’ve ever met, whether driving a duo, or dancing, or telling outrageous tales. Three of us have eight or nine earned degrees...but Aunt Hilda with none is a walking encyclopedia from insatiable curiosity and extraordinary memory. We two are baby factories and you two are not—but two men can impregnate fifty women—or five hundred. There is no end to the ways that we four are unequal."

"I learned before you were born that when someone wants to see me in a hurry, the urgency is almost never mutual."

"“Let me add,” he went on, “that since I handle secret and most-secret despatches, I know things that I don’t know, if I make my meaning clear.”"

"I trust that I am honest with myself. I know that I am not very sociable and I expect to go on being so; a man capable of creative work has no time to spare for fools who would like to visit."

"I am forced to conclude that being right has little to do with holding a woman’s affections."

"It is better to be a lively frump than a stylish corpse."

"Random numbers are to a computer what free will is to a human being."

"At that point I realized that I had been thinking in Russian. It’s a wonderful language for paranoid thoughts."

"I carried out my purpose: War and Peace, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, and so forth. Would you believe it? Something is gained in translation; the originals are even more depressing and soporific than translations. I’m not sure what purpose Russian fiction has, but it can’t be entertainment."

"“‘Magic,’” I stated, “is a symbol for any process not understood.”"

"I wish they wouldn’t hold mornings so early."

"At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that “news” is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different—in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness."

"I am learning that we still have things to learn."

"“Sharpie, you’ve got a one-track mind.” “It’s the main track. Reproduction is the main track; the methods and mores of sexual copulation are the central feature of all higher developments of life.” “You’re ignoring money and television.” “Piffle! All human activities including scientific research are either mating dances and care of the young, or the dismal sublimations of born losers in the only game in town.”"

"I can’t evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven’t lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs."

"Above all, Heinlein taught us to accept his wisdom without becoming followers. He taught us to become, and to remain, individuals. … The Libertarian movement must go far to prove itself, but it may prove to be the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak era. The shadow of two powerful minds cast themselves over everything about that movement, whether we recognize it or not: the minds of Ayn Rand and Robert A. Heinlein. … What Heinlein gave it, no less vital if we’re to effect the changes we aspire to, was heart the guts."

"The people of every nation want to make their country cleaner, stronger, and a better place for the next generation. The quality of patriotism in its finer form is seen in every land around the world. As Robert Heinlein often made clear, it should not be confused with imperialism, which is conceptually its opposite, nor with a refusal to listen to criticism. Patriots listen to and evaluate all criticism; but they make up their own minds. This idea, of thoughtful independence and loyalty to one’s own kind (species, nation, town, and family) runs through the corpus of Heinlein writing."

"Heinlein stories also say that there are in this world (and all others) good guys and bad guys, and the good guys will finally win, and the bad guys, driven by greed or vanity or hate or lust for power, should and will finally lose. This is a moral position, and Heinlein’s works never lack morality (which, as he clearly pointed out, has little or nothing to do with the conventional definition of morals, so often preoccupied as they are with the sexual customs of a particular age)."

"The fourth notion drawn in the works of Heinlein, something which again may seem unpopular today, is the idea that competence is good. There’s nothing wrong with being a polymath. You don’t have to be bad at one thing, you can be good at many things. When you read Heinlein, he doesn’t write about idiots, fumbling their inadequate way through the world to achieve nothing. And why should he? Others are doing that. Too many novels today have as their message: “Let me take you in this book from the squalid, dull, and meaningless life that you live, to the squalid, dull, and meaningless life that I live. Heinlein would have none of that. He believed that there is nothing wrong with being competent."

"He pronounces himself dismayed not only by political events of the last few decades, but by the terrifying decay of education and growth of irrationalism in America."

"If you mean he believes the wise should rule the foolish and the competent rule the incompetent, again I plead guilty to the same offense. Somebody’s got to drive—should it not be the best driver?"