If you try and lose then it isn't your fault. But if you don't try and we lose, then it's all your fault.

The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong — for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.

When I write fiction, I create characters whose views are not my own, and I allow them to be eloquent in defense of their, not my, views.

The only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge.

What a waste of time to be posthumously famous.

Andrew said you were the best person he ever knew." "He reached that conclusion before he saw me raise three barbarian children to adulthood. I understand your mother has six." "Right." "And you're the oldest." "Yes." "That's too bad. Parents always make their worst mistakes with the oldest children. That's when parents know the least and care the most, so they're more likely to be wrong and also more likely to insist that they're right.

You're a monster. Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise? No, just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustable.