All men are created unequal.
Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.
A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.
There is only one way to console a widow. But remember the risk.
When the need arises—and it does—you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don’t farm it out—that doesn’t make it nicer, it makes it worse.
Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.
It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.
One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.
Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it’s more sanitary.
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
Never appeal to a man’s “better nature.” He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.
Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry. N.B.: Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead!
Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
In a mature society, “civil servant” is semantically equal to “civil master.”
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.
The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race’s most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must—never for sport.
A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.
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. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the “Naturist” reveals his hatred for his own race—i.e., his own self-hatred.
In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate.
As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women —it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly “natural.”
Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnatural” and a “despoiling of Nature.”
“No man is an island—” Much as we may feel and act as individuals, our race is a single organism, always growing and branching—which must be pruned regularly to be healthy. This necessity need not be argued; anyone with eyes can see that any organism which grows without limit always dies in its own poisons. The only rational question is whether pruning is best done before or after birth.
Being an incurable sentimentalist I favor the former of these methods—killing makes me queasy, even when it’s a case of “He’s dead and I’m alive and that’s the way I wanted it to be.”
But this may be a matter of taste. Some shamans think that it is better to be killed in a war, or to die in childbirth, or to starve in misery, than never to have lived at all. They may be right.
But I don’t have to like it—and I don’t.
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides?
Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare—most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat-driver syndrome.”
What are the facts? Again and again and again—what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history”—what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevotent—it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.
Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)
The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of “loyalty” and “duty.” Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute—get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.
People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
The more you love, the more you can love—and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.
Masturbation is cheap, clean, convenient, and free of any possibility of wrongdoing—and you don’t have to
go home in the cold. But it’s lonely.
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
If tempted by something that feels “altruistic,” examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of—but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
$100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000—by which time it will be worth nothing.
Dear, don’t bore him with trivia or burden him with your past mistakes. The happiest way to deal with a man is never to tell him anything he does not need to know.
Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.
Everybody lies about sex.
If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called “behaviorist psychology.” So they are wrong from scratch—as clever and as wrong as phlogiston chemists.
The shamans are forever yacking about their snake-oil “miracles.” I prefer the Real McCoy—a pregnant Woman.
If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I’ve never heard of it.
Thou shalt remember the Eleventh Commandment and keep it Wholly.
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”—find out how he feels about astrology.
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
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. If you don’t like this choice—don’t gamble.
When the ship lifts, all bills are paid. No regrets.
The first time I was a drill instructor I was too inexperienced for the job—the things I taught those lads must have got some of them killed. War is too serious a matter to be taught by the inexperienced.
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Money is the sincerest of all flattery.
Women love to be flattered.
So do men.
You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.
Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, “equality” is a disaster.
Peace is an extension of war by political means. Plenty of elbowroom is pleasanter—and much safer.
One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
The phrase “we (I) (you) simply must—” designates something that need not be done. “That goes without saying” is a red warning. “Of course” means you had best check it yourself. These small-change clichés and others like them, when read correctly, are reliable channel markers.
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Rub her feet.
If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.
Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs—sex especially. When they are growing up, they are nerve ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any invasion of their privacy. Oh, sure, they’ll make mistakes—but that’s their business, not yours. (You made your own mistakes, did you not?)
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
XI
The Tale of the Adopted Daughter
Stand with me on Man’s old planet, gazing north when sky has darkened; follow down the Dipper’s handle, half again and veering leftward—Do you see it? Can you sense it? Nothing there but cold and darkness. Try again with both eyes covered, try once more with inner vision, hearken now to wild geese honking, sounding through the endless spaces, bouncing off the strange equations—
There it glistens! Hold the vision, warp your ship through crumpled spaces. Gently, gently, do not lose it. Virgin planet, new beginnings—
Woodrow Smith, of many faces, many names, and many places, led this band to New Beginnings, planet clean and bright as morning. End of line, he told his shipmates. Endless miles of untouched prairie, endless stands of uncut timber, winding rivers, soaring mountains, hidden wealth and hidden dangers. Here is life or here is dying; only sin is lack of trying. Grab your picks and grab your shovels; dig latrines and build your hovels—next year better, next year stronger, next year’s furrows that much longer.
Learn to grow it, learn to eat it. You can’t buy it; learn to make it! How d’you know until you’ve tried it? Try again and keep on trying—
Ernest Gibbons, né Woodrow Smith, sometimes known as Lazarus Long, et al., President of New Beginnings Bank of Commerce, walked out of the Waldorf Dining Room. He stood on the veranda, picking his teeth and looking over the busy street scene. Half a dozen saddle mules and a loper (muzzled) were hitched just below him. Up the street to the right a mule train from out back was unloading at the dock of the Top Dollar Trading Post (E. Gibbons, Prop.). A dog lay in the dust in the middle of the street; mounted traffic went around him. Across the street to his left a dozen children played some noisy game in the yard of Mrs. Mayberry’s Primary School.
He could count thirty-seven people without moving from that spot. What a change eighteen years made! Top Dollar was no longer the only settlement, or even the largest. New Pittsburgh was larger (and dirtier), and both Separation and Junction were large enough to be called towns. This from only two shiploads and in a colony that had almost starved its first winter.
He did not like to think about that winter. That one family —cannibalism had not actually been proved—still, it was just as well that they were all dead.
Forget it. The weak ones died, and the bad ones died or were killed; the stock that survived was always stronger, smarter, more decent. New Beginnings was a planet to be proud of, and it would get better and better and better for a long time.
Still, almost twenty years was long enough to stay in one place; it was time to ship out again. In many ways it had been more fun when he and Andy, God rest his sweet innocent soul, had gone banging around the stars together, lining up real estate and never staying longer than necessary to assess potentialities. He wondered if his son Zaccur would be back on time with a third load of hopefuls.
He lifted his kilt and scratched above his right knee—checked his blaster—hitched at the belt band on the left, checked his needle gun—scratched the back of his neck, made sure of his second throwing knife. Ready to face the public, he considered whether to go to his desk at the bank or to the trading post and check that incoming shipment. Neither appealed to him.
One of the hitched mules nodded at him. Gibbons looked at him, then said, “Hi, Buck. How are you, boy? Where’s your boss?”
Buck closed his lips tightly, then said explosively, “Pannnk!”
That settled one point: If Clyde Leamer had hitched here instead of in front of the bank, it meant that Clyde intended to use the side
door and was looking for another loan. Let’s see what effort he makes to find me.
Skip the trading post, too—not only would Clyde look there next but it wasn’t fair to make Rick nervous by showing up before he had time to steal his usuals; good storekeepers were hard to come by. Rick was always honest—5 per cent, no more, no less.
Gibbons felt in his shirt pocket, found a sweet, gave it to Buck on the flat of his hand. The mule took it neatly, nodded thanks. Gibbons reflected that these mutant mules, fertile and breeding true, were the biggest help to colonizing since the Libby Drive. They took cold-sleep easily—when you shipped swine, half your breeding stock arrived as pork—and they could look out for themselves in many ways; a mule could stomp a wild loper to death.