H. Beam Piper Quotes

English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results.

Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.

I had a lot of other ideas, now and then, but every time I took a second look at one, it got sick and died.

Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Angle bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.

You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol - or he'll try to eat the one you gave him!

Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around.

I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.

Keep a goverment poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master.

Vengeance is a strange human motivation --- it can drive a man to do things which he neither would nor could achieve without it ... and because of that it lies behind some of the greatest sagas of human literature!

Sanity, it would seem, was a dangerously contagious disease.