"No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority."

"I had never been much interested in Pluto, too many facts and too much isolation."

"Yes, sir, there are things to see and do on the French Riviera without spending money."

"All human behavior, all human motivations, all man's hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind's tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction."

"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere."

"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."

"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."

"I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue?"

"A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity."

"Women talk when they want to. Or don't."

"He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an insurance fee amounting to much less that the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state's means of exchange."

"Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it."

"Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires."

"He's an honest politician--he stays bought."

"To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."

"History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion - ie., none to speak of."

"Democracy is a poor system, the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method."

"Majority rule gives the ruthless strong man plenty of elbow room to oppress his fellows."

"Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy."

"His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching."

"Bir kaplanın sırtında yolculuk etmenin en önemli kuralı, kulaklarını asla bırakmamaktır."

"Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong."

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

"A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom."

"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."

"If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong."

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

"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."

"Sex without love is merely healthy exercise."

"Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you're ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he's as happy as a worm in an apple - asleep."

"The best things in life are beyond money, their price is agony and sweat and devotion ... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself - ultimate cost for perfect value."

"Many problems can be solved by a man not frightened by them."

"My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself."

"Butterflies are self propelled flowers."

"I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing."

"The Mother Thing makes our world."

"Never try to outstubborn a cat."

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything."

"Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers."

"You can't believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside."

"Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution."

"Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs."

"Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time."

"Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight."

"Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple."

"His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency."

"You. What is the moral difference, ifany, between the soldier and the civilian?""The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civicvirtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the bodypolitic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life.The civilian does not."

"A thing can be fine on paper but utterly crummy in the field."

"I know where I came from-but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once-and you all went away.So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me-Jane-here alone in the dark.I miss you dreadfully!"

"Never tease an old dog, he might have one bite left."