More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
A political figure is not a single man, so I was learning, but a compatible team.
Human languages fall into four groups: inflecting ones as in Anglo-American, positional as in Chinese, agglutinative as in Old Turkish, polysynthetic (sentence units) as in Eskimo—to
Let us protect our own—but let us not be seduced by fear and hatred into foolish acts. The stars will never be won by little minds; we must be big as space itself.”
The trouble with adopting a cat is that they always have kittens.
If there were ethical basics that transcended time and place, then they were true both for Martians and for men.
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay—and claims a halo for his dishonesty.
“Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong—but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong! Heaven save us from poltroons who fear to make a choice. Let us stand up and be counted.”
“A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!”
The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay. People don’t really want change, any change at all—and xenophobia is very deep-rooted. But we progress, as we must—if we are to go out to the stars.
Voltaire?—someone said, “If Satan should ever replace God he would find it necessary to assume the attributes of Divinity.”

