I hate to tell you this, but you are just stupid and eager and sincere enough to make the kind of officer that men love to follow into some silly predicament.
I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers... It is an invitation to think – not to believe.
Value’ has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human – ‘market value’ is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitively different or trade would be impossible.
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive – and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?
If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped – say with a stone ax – will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier.
Call it that if you like. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.
One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.
Oh, “Tanstaafl.” Means “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” And isn’t,′ I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, ’or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless.
But you don’t have to take his advice. Whether you use his ideas, or whether they spark some different plan – make your decision and snap out orders. The one thing – the only thing! – that can strike terror in the heart of a good platoon sergeant is to find that he’s working for a boss who can’t make up his mind.
The problem with dictatorships – as I read somewhere recently – and with poisonous ideologies, too, is that they are like sharks. They must keep moving forward or die. What caused their aggression is not what you did. It’s who they are.
A poisonous snake is not dangerous, not any more than a loaded gun is dangerous – in each case, if you handle it properly. The thing that made that coral snake dangerous was that I hadn’t known what it was, what it could do. If, in my ignorance, I had handled it carelessly, it would have killed me as casually and as innocently as a kitten scratches.
I’m a professional bad example. You can learn a lot by watching me. Or listening to me. Either one.
Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don’t know about you, tovarishch, but I am.
When did you ever worry about offending me?’ ‘Always, Man, once I understood that you could be offended.
No, I hadn’t made any decision; my mouth was leading its own life.
You can die anyplace. They’ve never managed to regulate that.
A man can face known danger. But the unknown frightens him. We.
Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art. But it’s up to the artist to use language that can be understood. Most of these jokers don’t want to use language you and I can learn; they would rather sneer because we ‘fail’ to see what they are driving at. If anything. Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.
Nobody paid attention; they walked around or stepped over – except one woman carrying a baby, who stopped, kicked him carefully in face, then went down ramp.
I object to conscription the way a lobster objects to boiling water: it may be his finest hour but it’s not his choice.