Gabriel Cooper > Gabriel's Quotes

“But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“He's an honest politician--he stays bought.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“There is no safety this side of the grave”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Secrecy begets tyranny.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“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.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“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 - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“In the twentieth century, nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America---and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“The Universe was a silly place at best...but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings 'just happened' to be atoms that 'just happened' to get together in ways which 'just happened' to look like consistent laws and some configurations 'just happened' to possess self-awareness and that two 'just happened' to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Straining at gnats and swallowing camels is a required course in all law schools.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost! (96)”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“If you're crazy, there's two things you can do to make yourself feel better: One is to get yourself cured. The other is to make everyone you have to deal with crazy.”
― Alan Dean Foster

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”
― J.K. Rowling

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
― Anonymous, Holy Bible: New International Version

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”
― Douglas Adams