Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.

How can you argue with a woman who won't?

The lessons of history teach us - if the lessons of history teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.

Around the time of the Terran Caesar Augustus, a Martian artist had been composing a work of art. It could have been called a poem, a musical opus, or a philosophical treatise; it was a series of emotions arranged in tragic, logical necessity. Since it could be experienced by a human only in the sense in which a man blind from birth might have a sunset explained to him, it does not matter which category it be assigned.

The basic of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

A religion is a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong--and you are strong. The great trouble with religion--any religion--is that the religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge these propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason--but one cannot have both.

Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.