No storyteller has been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.

A zest for living must include a willingness to die.

Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.