Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist’s view, ‘justice’ is a search for workable...

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you’re ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don’t need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to...

I told you that ‘juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms. ‘Delinquent’ means ‘failing in duty.’ But duty is an adult virtue—indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge...

But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in...

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.

I’ve never been able to understand ‘faith’ myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones – by faith...

The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens.

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

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.]

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.

Support for the arts — merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it’s eight times as good as any other method.

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.

Abstract design is all right—for wallpaper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity or terror, which is not abstract at all but very human.

The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger.

I’m too much old-timer to be rude to a woman no matter what – they have so much of what we have none of.

Cheops’ Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.

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...

His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.

Civilians are like beans; you buy ’em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.But you can’t buy fighting spirit.

Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.

Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.

backseat driver” syndrome.

Democracy can’t work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that’s all there is– so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is...

Death isn’t funny.” “Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.

Because the world has gone nutty and art always paints the spirit of its times

Oh, you have to charge ’em, Jubal. The marks won’t pay attention if it’s free.

I waited. Women talk when they want to. Or don’t.

The great trouble with religion – any religion – is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith...

One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.

Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you.

The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails...

Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.

Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.

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...

The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up.

If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of...

TANSTAAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

Belief gets in the way of learning.

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.

It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws.

Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it’s more sanitary.