Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who’s boss.
Spacemen - men who work in space, pilots and jetmen and astrogators and such - are men who like a few million miles of elbow room.
Take care of the cojones and the frijoles will take care of themselves. Try to have getaway money - but don't be fanatic about it.
Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their own, the hard way.
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.
By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets fretful. After he pees in it, he likes the flavor better, so he buys it.
Ability is a wonderful thing, but its value is greatly enhanced by dependability. Ability implies repeatability and accountability.
Do-gooding is like treating hemophilia - the real cure is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death...before they breed more hemophiliacs.
Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.
Violence never settles anything should be debated by the ghosts of Hitler and Stalin, with the city fathers of Carthage as referees.
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.
Civilians are like beans; you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy. But you can't buy fighting spirit.
Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.
Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.
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.
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.
Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell.
I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey.
The lessons of history teach us - if the lessons of history teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
Death isn't funny." "Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.
The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.
Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?" "I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady.
If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say : Let the damned thing go down the drain!
But, if there ever was a time in history when "peace" meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.
Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of single-minded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money.
Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.
There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service.
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.
There are perhaps 5% of the population that simply can't think. There are another 5% who can, and do. The remaining 90% can think, but don't
From the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which over crowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness.
When the need arises - and it does - you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don't farm it out — that doesn't make it nicer, it makes it worse.
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules about sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.
I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.
I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith-it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
The killer looked up as the bullet hit him. He looked as if he were puzzled by some strange occurence, being too freshly dead to be aware of it.
Pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival.
It is impossible for a man to love his wife whole heartedly without loving all women somewhat. I suppose that the converse must be true of women.
Age does not bring wisdom... but it does give perspective... and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted.
To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.
It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code... obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.
Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That’s a law of nature, to be known henceforth as ‘Harshaw’s Law.
Teaching causes people to go into situations from which they cannot escape, except by thinking. Do not handicap children by making their lives easy.
I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists.