Screenwriters From The United States

"Sic transit gloria mundi—Tuesday is usually worse."

"Like searching at midnight in a dark cellar for a black cat that isn’t there."

"A distance “as the crow flies” is significant only to crows."

"Everybody has a skeleton in the closet; the thing is to keep ’em there and not at the feast."

"Max opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “No.” “Speak louder. You used a word I don’t understand.”"

"But as grandpop always said, there are just three ways to get ahead; sweat and genius, getting born into the right family, or marrying into it."

"Wherever there is power and mass to manipulate, Man can live."

"Go ahead. Go right ahead. Don’t let me discourage you. Any objections from me would simply confirm your preconceptions."

"“It didn’t happen that way,” Roger Stone cut in, “so there is no use talking about other possibilities. They probably aren’t really possibilities at all, if only we understood it.” Pollux: “Predestination.” Castor: “Very shaky theory.” Roger grinned. “I’m not a determinist and you can’t get my goat. I believe in free will.” Pollux: “Another very shaky theory.” “Make up your minds,” their father told them. “You can’t have it both ways.” “Why not?” asked Hazel. “Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.” “Not mathematical,” objected Pollux. Castor nodded. “Just poetry.” “And not very good poetry.”"

"The situation has multifarious ramifications not immediately apparent to the unassisted optic."

"“You have us going faster than light.” “I thought the figures were a bit large.”"

"If you’re going to be businessmen, don’t confuse the vocation with larceny."

"Mr. Stone was satisfied, being sure in his heart that any person skilled with mathematical tools could learn anything else he needed to know, with or without a master."

"Every technology goes through three stages: first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final stage of smooth simplicity and efficient performance based on correct understanding of natural laws and proper design therefrom."

"I believe in — I am proud to belong to — the United States. Despite shortcomings, from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history. And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown — in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability … and goodness … .of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth, that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth — but that we will always make it … survive … endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure — will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage — and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart."

"I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies."

"I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones."

"Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries — but it is a force stronger than crime. I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses...in the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land."

"I am not going to talk about religious beliefs, but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults. Take Father Michael down our road a piece — I'm not of his creed, but I know the goodness and charity and lovingkindness that shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike; if I'm in trouble, I'll go to him. My next-door neighbor is a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat. No fee — no prospect of a fee. I believe in Doc."

"She grabbed him by both ears and kissed him quickly, then ran away. Don stared after her, rubbing his mouth. Girls, he reflected, were much odder than dragons. Probably another race entirely."

"Chief, perhaps it would be clearest to say that the fasarta modulates the garbab in such a phase relationship that the thrimaleen is forced to bast—or, to put it another way, somebody loosed mice in the washroom. Seriously, there is no popular way to explain it. If you were willing to spend five hard years with me, working up through the math, I could probably bring you to the same level of ignorance and confusion that I enjoy."

"He gave up and went back to loafing, found that he could sleep all right in the afternoons but that the practice kept him awake at night."

"The attack should not have happened, of course. The rice farmer sergeant had been perfectly right; the Federation could not afford to risk its own great cites to punish the villagers of Venus. He was right—from his viewpoint. A rice farmer has one logic; the men who live by and for power have another and entirely different logic. Their lives are built on tenuous assumptions, fragile as reputation; they could not afford to ignore a challenge to their power—the Federation could not afford not to punish the insolent colonists."

"Don took it and said, “Uh, thanks! That’s awfully kind of you. I’ll pay it back, first chance.” “Instead, pay it forward to some other brother who needs it.”"

"Man needs freedom, but few men are so strong as to be happy with complete freedom. A man needs to be part of a group, with accepted and respected relationships. Some men join foreign legions for adventure; still more swear on a bit of paper in order to acquire a framework of duties and obligations, customs and taboos, a time to work and a time to loaf, a comrade to dispute with and a sergeant to hate—in short, to belong."

"A second sun blazed white and swelled visibly as he watched. What on Earth would have been—so many times had been—a climbing mushroom cloud was here in open space a perfect geometrical sphere, growing unbelievably. It swelled still larger, dropping from limelight white to to silvery violet, became blotched with purple, red and flame. And still it grew, until it blanked out the earth beyond it. At the time it had been transformed into a radioactive cosmic cloud Circum-Terra had been passing over, or opposite, the North Atlantic; the swollen incandescent cloud was visible to most of the habitable portions of the globe, a burning symbol in the sky."

"Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor. In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years. We now crush it. In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself. Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!"

"He had let himself be bulldozed by the odds against him. He promised himself never again to pay any attention to the odds, but only to the issues."

"He considered horoscopes as silly as spectacles on a cow."

"The point is, your request for a lawyer comes about two hundred years too late to be meaningful. The verbalisms lag behind the facts. Nevertheless, you shall have a lawyer—or a lollipop, whichever you prefer, after I am through questioning you. If I were you, I’d take the lollipop. More nourishing."

"Everything is theoretically impossible, until it’s done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen."

"Don, have you been dealing with a booklegger?"

"He was still having trouble readjusting. Wars were something you studied, not something that actually happened."

"Beat the plowshares back into swords; the other was a maiden aunt’s fancy."

"I don’t believe in luck, Sam. Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius."

"In the army it takes an eight-man working party to help a brass hat blow his nose."

"“What is a ‘hunch’?” “Eh? It’s a belief that something is so, or isn’t so, without evidence.” “I’d call a hunch the result of automatic reasoning below the conscious level on data you did not know you possessed.”"

"The matter was still "Top Secret" and the subject of cabinet debates at the time of the Scranton Riot. Don't ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough boys and girls to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I've read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don't know; it sounds Utopian."

"Marriage is not ownership and wives are not property."

"McIlvaine continued, “Take the amoeba—a more basic, and much more successful life form than ours. The motivational psychology of the amoeba—” I switched off my ears; free speech gives a man the right to talk about the “psychology” of an amoeba, but I don’t have to listen."

"Listen, son—most women are damn fools and children. But they’ve got more range than we’ve got. The brave ones are braver, the good ones are better—and the vile ones are viler."

"Mary? After all, what was she? Just another babe. True, I was disgusted with her for letting herself be used as bait. It was all right for her to use her femaleness as an agent; the Section had to have female operatives. There have always been female spies, and the young and pretty ones have always used the same tools."

"“Let me get this,” the Old Man said. “You are promising the human race that, if we will just surrender, you will take care of us and make us happy. Right?” “Exactly!” The Old Man studied this while looking past my shoulders. He spat on the floor. “You know,” he said slowly, “me and my kind, we have often been offered that bargain. It never worked out worth a damn.”"

"There was nothing under her clothes but girl and assorted items of lethal hardware."

"The Old Man’s unique gift was the ability to reason logically with unfamiliar, hard-to-believe facts as easily with the commonplace. Not much, eh? Most minds stall dead when faced with facts which conflict with basic beliefs; “I-just-can’t-believe-it” is all one word to highbrows and dimwits alike."

"There is one thing no head of a country can know, and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him."

"I’m going to put it to you straight. Never mind about being chief engineer of a planet; these days even a farmer needs the best education he can get. Without it he’s just a country bumpkin, a stumbling peasant, poking seeds into the ground and hoping a miracle will make them grow."

"I’m not raising any kids to be radioactive dust."

"Life is not merely persistent, as Jock puts it; life is explosive. The basic theorem of population mathematics to which there has never been found an exception is that population increases always, not merely up to the extent of the food supply, but beyond it, to the minimum diet that will sustain life—the ragged edge of starvation."

"I said, “What do you think about it, Paul?” The boss smiled gently. “I don’t. I haven’t enough data.”"