"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship."

"I never learned from a man who agreed with me."

"The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract."

"I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting."

"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."

"Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price."

"English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing."

"All those religions--they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying."

"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 at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason - but one cannot have both."

"Secrecy begets tyranny."

"Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together."

"Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation."

"Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness."

"He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two of the papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once."

"Anything which is physically possible can be made financially possible, if the people of a state desire it."

"Customs, morals--is there a difference?"

"Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse---and without examining evidence which their "common sense told them was impossible."

"There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe."

"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - and quickly."

"One might almost define intelligence as the level at which an aware organism demands, 'What's in it for me?"

"There used to be, dirtside, a legal defenses called "diminished capacity" and "not guilty by reason on insanity." These concepts would bewilder a Loonie. In Luna City a man would necessarily be of diminished mental capacity to even think about rape; to carry one out would be the strongest possible proof of insanity - but among Loonies such mental disorders would not gain a rapist any sympathy. loonies do not psychoanalyze a rapist; they kill him. Now. Fast. Brutally."

"It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip."

"In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality."

"I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. 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."

"Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get."

"The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger."

"God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good-and is no sillier than any other theology."

"But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees."

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy."

"The golden sunshine of Italy congealed into tears. Here's to alcoholic brotherhood ... much more suited to the frail human soul, if any, than any other sort."

"One man's "magic is another man's engineering. "Supernatural is a null word."

"If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people. -- Lazarus Long."

"They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday."

"For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization."

"Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done."

"Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."

"You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic."

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."

"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."

"It's a long story. Want a refill?""No, let's start the steak. Where's the button?""Right here.""Well, push it.""Me? You offered to cook.""Ben Caxton, I will lie here and starve before I will get up to push a button six inches from your finger""As you wish." He pressed the button. "But don't forget who cooked dinner."

"There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick."

"I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food."

"Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you."

"Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is."

"You can't conquer a free man, the most you can do is kill him."

"Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. 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!"

"The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for---if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most."

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."

"Were you born stupid, Heinrich, or did you have to study?"

"If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains."