All quotes

A wise man depends upon his friends for information and upon himself for decisions.

Information is the tool and the goad of intelligence.

"What's the most important thing to know about a weapon?" he asked. The general's forehead creased. "How to use it effectively, of course." Coogan shook his head. "That's an overgeneralization. The most important thing is to know your…

He thought, too, about his need for a real animal; within him an actual hadred once more manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn't…

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boudaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the…

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your…

Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.

Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.

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.

His bow to me must have been calculated on a slide rule; it suggested that I was about to be Supreme Minister but was not quite there yet, that I was his senior but nevertheless a civilian — then subtract five degrees for the fact that he…

I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I had sampled them — public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash — but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law's kiss. Given…

People don't really want change, any change at all — and xenophobia is very deep-rooted. But we progress, as we must — if we are to go out to the stars.

Son, suppose you tend to your knitting and I tend to mine.

A world is supported by four things. The learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain you cannot see the mountain.

All men beneath your position covet your position.

Wild beasts of the desert do hunt there, Waiting for the innocents to pass. Oh-h-h, tempt not the gods of the desert, Lest you seek a lonely epitaph.

Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is true of humans in the infinite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules sealed in a flask. The human question is not how many…

Give as few orders as possible. Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.

How easy it is to kill the uprooted plant, especially when you put it down in hostile soil.

There are those among my young men who have reached the age of wild spirits. They must be eased through this period. I must leave no great reasons around for them to challenge me. Because I would have to maim and kill among them. This is…

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path…

The mind can go either direction under stress — toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind…

When your opponent fears you, then's the moment when you give the fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous…

If you rely only on your eyes, your other senses weaken.

The price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving paradise in this life — we went soft, we lost our edge.

And what he saw was a time nexus within this cave, a boiling of possibilities focused here, wherein the most minute action — the wink of an eye, a careless word, a misplaced grain of sand — moved a gigantic lever across the known universe…

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

Control the coinage and the courts — let the rabble have the rest. If you want profits, you must rule. There is truth in those words, but I ask myself who are the rabble and who are the ruled?