Great Throughts Treasury

"The Universe was a damned silly place at best... but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings just happened to be some atoms that just happened to get together in configurations which just happened to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations just happened to possess self-awareness and that two such just happened to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside. No, Jubal would not buy the just happened theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe--in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself."

"The verdict to be passed on the third planet around Sol was never in doubt."

"The very idea that the Chief would let anybody expose himself to danger in his place is-well, I ought to slap your face; that's what I ought to do!"

"The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you."

"The way to live a long time?oh, a thousand years or more?is something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it?but don?t worry about it. Live each day as if you were to die next sunrise. Then face each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it, joyously. And never think about the past. No regrets, ever."

"The ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them."

"The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak."

"The word 'love' designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness."

"The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for---if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most."

"Then I glanced at the ring on my finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from?but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once?and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren?t really there at all. There isn?t anybody but me?Jane?here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!"

"Theology is never any help it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything."

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

"There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships and missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective, that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time? We are the boys who go to a particular place, at H-hour, occupy a designated terrain, stand on it, dig the enemy out of their holes, force them then and there to surrender or die. We're the bloody infantry, the doughboy, the duckfoot, the foot soldier who goes where the enemy is and takes him on in person. We've been doing it, with changes in weapons but very little change in our trade, at least since the time five thousand years ago when the foot sloggers of Sargon the Great forced the Sumerians to cry Uncle! Maybe they'll be able to do without us someday. Maybe some mad enius with myopia, a bulging forehead, and a cybernetic mind will devise a weapon that can go down a hole, pick out the opposition, adn force it to surrender or die--without killing that gang of your own people they've got imprisoned down there. I wouldn't know; I'm not a genius, I'm an M.I. In the meantime, until they build a machine to replace us, my mates can handle that job--and I might be some help on it, too."

"There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority."

"There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled `Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" : but beavers and their dams are."

"There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men."

"There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat."

"There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk ?his life, his fortune and his sacred honor? on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else."

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."

"There is a misconception, geocentric and anthropomorphic, common to the large majority the the earthbound, which causes them to visualize a planetary system stereoscopically. The mind's eye sees a sun, remote from a backdrop of stars, and surrounded by spinning apples -- the planets. Step out on your balcony and look. Can you tell the planets from the stars? Venus you may pick out with ease, but could you tell it from Canopus, if you had not previously been introduced? That little red speck -- is it Mars, or is it Antares? Blast for Antares, believing it to be a planet, and you will never live to have grandchildren."

"There is an old, old story about a theologian who was asked to reconcile the Doctrine of Divine Mercy with the doctrine of infant damnation. 'The Almighty,' he explained, 'finds it necessary to do things in His official and public capacity which in His private and personal capacity He deplores."

"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?"

"There is no safety this side of the grave."

"There is no such thing as "social gambling." Either you are there to cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it -- or you're a sucker."

"There is no such thing as Just a cat."

"There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe."

"There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured...the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked to him with a stick. If you disturb the patient at such time, he may break into tears or become violent."

"There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary...because it hurts less to write than it does not to write."

"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."

"There is nothing in this world so permanent as a temporary emergency."

"There is only one way to console a widow but remember the risk."

"There is solemn satisfaction in doing the best you can for eight billion people. Perhaps their lives have no cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt."

"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."

"There seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously?after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and sub-literate every time he opens his mouth."

"There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was? Man is the animal who laughs, Jubal answered."

"There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service."

"They didn?t want it good, they wanted it Wednesday."

"They don?t have mothers. Just ask any trained private. They reproduce by fission... like all bacteria."

"They insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him."

"They made the predictable fuss about taking a cat into a room and an auto-bellhop is not responsive to bribes?hardly an improvement. But the assistant manager had more flexibility in his synapses; He listened to reason as long as it was crisp and rustled."

"Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws ? always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good ? not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it."

"Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you."

"This has more aspects than a cat has hair."

"This is the great day. This is the greatest event in all the history of the human race, up to this time. That is ? today is New Year's Day of the Year One. If we don't change the calendar, historians will do so. The human race ? this is our change, our puberty rite, bar mitzvah, confirmation, from the change of our infancy into adulthood for the human race. And we're going to go on out, not only to the Moon, to the stars; we're going to spread. I don't know that the United States is going to do it; I hope so. I have ? I'm an American myself; I want it to be done by us. But in any case, the human race is going to do it, it's utterly inevitable: we're going to spread through the entire universe."

"This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you."

"This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply."

"This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. Look for it. Study it. It is too late to save this culture - this worldwide culture, not just the freak show here in California. Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile; we must again have books, of stable inks and resistant paper."

"This Universe never did make sense; I suspect that it was built on government contract."

"This very personal relationship, ?value,? has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him . . . and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts ?the best things in life are free.? Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted? and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears."

"Thou art God, and I am God and all that groks is God."