H. Beam Piper > Quotes

“I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.”
― H. Beam Piper, Fuzzies and Other People

“Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around.”
― H. Beam Piper, Little Fuzzy

“English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Angle bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.”
― H. Beam Piper, Fuzzy Sapiens

“You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous.

"Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised. "Then your democracy's a farce, and the people are only free on sufferance. If their ballots aren't secured by arms, they're worthless.”
― H. Beam Piper, Space Viking

“Sanity, it would seem, was a dangerously contagious disease.”
― H. Beam Piper, First Cycle

“...you know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids.”
― H. Beam Piper, Fuzzy Sapiens

“It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face -- the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.”
― H. Beam Piper, Little Fuzzy

“Vengeance is a strange human motivation --- it can drive a man to do things which he neither would nor could achieve without it ... and because of that it lies behind some of the greatest sagas of human literature!”
― H. Beam Piper, Space Viking

“He actually knows what has to be done and how to do it, and he's going right ahead and doing it, without holding a dozen conferences and round-table discussions and giving everybody a fair and equal chance to foul things up for him. You know as well as I do that that's undemocratic.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“Keep a government poor and weak and it’s your servant; let it get rich and powerful and it’s your master.”
― H. Beam Piper, The H. Beam Piper Megapack: 33 Classic Science Fiction Novels and Short Stories

“I had a lot of other ideas, now and then, but every time I took a second look at one, it got sick and died.”
― H. Beam Piper, Four Day Planet

“Does the Convocation make the laws?" Erskyll asked.
Hozhet was perplexed. "Make laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We have laws."
There were planets, here and there through the Empire, where an attitude like that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with elective parliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as many laws enacted during his term of office as possible.”
― H. Beam Piper, A Slave Is A Slave

“...that sounds like a real live issue to the people who don't think and have nothing to think with, which means a large majority of the voters.”
― H. Beam Piper, Fuzzy Sapiens

“a thing isn't much good if it can't stand being made fun of.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it--luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“It should belong to everybody. Let us call it the Commonwealth. That means something everybody owns in common."
"Something everybody owns, nobody owns," Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected.
"Oh, no, Mykhyl; it will belong to everybody," Khreggor Chmidd told him earnestly. "But somebody will have to take care of it for everybody. That," he added complacently, "will be you and me and the rest of us here."
"I believe," Yakoop Zhannar said, almost smiling, "that this freedom is going to be a wonderful thing. For us.”
― H. Beam Piper, A Slave Is A Slave

“Gresham's law, extended: Bad manners drive out good manners.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“Well, if a Little Fuzzy finds a door open, I’d like to know why he shouldn’t come in and look around.”
― H. Beam Piper

“What I object to is the way you're raiding the Sword-Worlds."

"You're crazy!" Basil Gorram exploded.

"Young man," Harkaman reproved, "the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask?”
― H. Beam Piper

“Since Logic derives from postulates, it never has, and never will, change a postulate. And a religious belief is a system of postulates ... so how can a man fight a native superstition with logic? Or anything else ...?”
― H. Beam Piper, Oomphel in the Sky

“There was an ancient word, originating in one of the lost languages of Pre-Atomic Terra—sixtifor. It meant, the basic, fundamental, question. Rovard Javasan, he suspected, had just asked the sixtifor.”
― H Beam Piper

“On Aditya, such would be unthinkable; on Aditya, everybody respects authority. Whether it's respectable or not.”
― H. Beam Piper, Ministry of Disturbance

“these ideological cliques form in a government--or any other organization. Subordinates are always chosen for their agreement with the views of their superiors, and the extremists always get to the top and shove the moderates under or out.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“Everything has to be at once for six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“You have ability and people who don't never forgive you for it. Your very existence is a constant reproach to them.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“It takes an awful lot of people, working together at an awful lot of jobs, to keep a civilization running.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)

“Why not everybody make friend, have fun, make help, be good?”
― H. Beam Piper, Fuzzy Sapiens

“It may just be," he added, "that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as Homo sapiens terra is a wild animal, which he has always been and always will be until he evolves into something different in a million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, just as transmutation of elements was a physical-science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means.”
― H. Beam Piper, Space Viking

“Zealous statesmen perhaps did more mischief than anything in the Galaxy--with the possible exception of procrastinating soldiers. That could indicate the fundamental difference between statecraft and war.”
― H. Beam Piper, The Works of H. Beam Piper (27 books)