Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on ... as long as the women and children are saved.

But space travel can't ease the pressure on a planet grown too crowded not even with today's ships and probably not with any future ships-because stupid people won't leave the slopes of their home volcano even when it starts to smoke and rumble. What space travel does do is drain off the best brains: those smart enough to see a catastrophe before it happens, and with the guts to pay the price-abandon home, wealth, friends, relatives, everything-and go. That's a tiny fraction of one percent. But that's enough.

When it don’t rain, the roof don’t leak; when it rains, I can’t fix it nohow.

If I had a Boy Scout I could make a fire by rubbing his hind legs together.

My old man taught me two things: 'Mind own business' and 'Always cut cards.'

Never try to outstubborn a cat.

It seems to me that the secret of true happiness in life is to know what you are and then be content to be that, in style, head up and proud, and not yearn to be something else.