When the citizens of a nation will no longer volunteer to defend it, then it is probably not worth saving. No nation has the right to survive with conscript troops, and in the long run, no nation ever has.
I took up writing because I needed money. And I continued to write because it’s safer than stealing and easier than working.
An invention is something that was “impossible” up to then that’s why governments grant patents.
Beauty is not diminished by being shared.
Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn – when they do, which isn’t often – on their own, the hard way.
With eternity to draw on there could be no reason for hurrying – ‘hurry’ was not a concept in Martian.
Television leaves no external scars.
Women will forgive anything. Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago.
Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can’t have what you’ve got coming to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don’t rate it.
Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.
More people worry themselves to death than bleed to death.
Never try to have the last word. You might get it.
Coffee comes in five descending stages: Coffee, Java, Jamoke, Joe, and Carbon Remover.
There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can’t poke his nose into-that’s the way we’re built and I assume that there’s some reason for that.
Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime – and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.
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.
Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing the risks you can’t avoid. This permits you to play out the game untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.
The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.
Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.
Money is truthful. If a man speaks of honor, make him pay cash.