Quotes – Page 14

It is not even for the Earthmen you fight, but for your own personal power. I see in you not a vision of a free Earth, but for a re-enslaved Earth. I see in you not the disruption of the Imperial power, but its replacement by a personal dictatorship.

Legal war? What is a legal war?

I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious

They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.

It is very difficult to be sure of anything, once you begin doubting your memory on principle.

Yet so many independent pieces of evidence seem to show that these Earthman are once again being misled into dreams of rebellion - Three times before, this same nonsense has raised rebellion, and the destruction brought down upon Earth has never served in the least to shake their stupid faith.

Could he, by accident, be on a ship carrying a cargo of lunatics to asylum -- or euthanasia? Or were these simply Earthmen?

You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose.

Every fife thousand years some inhabited planet has a fifty-fifty chance of being puffed to gas by a nova.

No scientist can guarantee any theory in advance.

Diplomacy has a language and a set of attitudes all its own. Relationships between the representatives of sovereign states, if conducted strictly according to protocol, are stylized and stultifying. The phrase "unpleasant consequences" becomes synonymous with war and "suitable adjustment" with surrender