Roger > Roger's Quotes

“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
― Robert Heinlein

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Pierre Dos Utt, Tanstaafl: A Plan for a New Economic World Order

“Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named…but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

“It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”
― Philip K. Dick

“What kind of male swears at a woman?” “Well, sir,” murmured Tiller after a discreet cough, “in fiction it is the—ah—Dashiell Hammett type, sir.” “Ah. Heart of gold beneath hardboiled exterior?” “Yes, sir. Blasphemy, the use of violence…” “Let’s restrict ourselves to life as it is lived, Tiller. By the way, I infer you’re an addict of detective fiction.” “Oh, yes, sir! And I’ve read many of your own, sir, and—” “Hmm,” said Ellery hastily. “Let that pass. In real life, Tiller?” “I fear,” said the valet in a sad murmur, “that there are few hearts of gold in real life, sir. Hard exteriors, certainly. I should say, sir, that there are two general types of woman-abusing men. Confirmed misogynists, sir, and—husbands.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“For some seconds he expressed himself with violence and fluency, describing the nature, habits, temperament, and antecedents (probable) of John Marco with a comprehensiveness, lucidity, and imagery that shocked Judge Macklin and caused Ellery’s eyes to widen with admiration. “Oh, lovely,” said Ellery warmly when Moley perforce paused for breath. “An exquisite object-lesson in invective.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“the quest for the Holy Grail itself is not more beset with difficulties than the merest seeking after one true, unvarnished word.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“You never know anything until you’ve proved it right.” “Nonsense. You can’t order life mathematically,” retorted the Judge. “Most of the time you ‘know’ things without factual evidence.” “I’m Coleridge’s ‘thought-benighted skeptic,’” said Ellery unhappily. “I question everything. Sometimes I even question the results of my own thinking. My mental life is very involved.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“MR. ELLERY QUEEN HAD once observed: “Crime, Ducamier or somebody has said, is a cancer on the social body. That’s true, but peculiarly. For despite the fact that cancer is an organism run wild, it nevertheless must possess pattern. Science concedes as much even while research men are trying to recognize it in their laboratories. That they’ve failed is neither here nor there; the pattern must exist. It’s the same story in detection: recognize the pattern and you’re within shooting distance of the ultimate truth.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“In one brief swoop through space from grass-grown clifftop to gray rock in blackened water she achieved the significance that passes for immortality in the modern world of news.”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“Oh, nonsense,” snapped Ellery, honking his klaxon. His face convulsed as he leaned out of the car and yelled to a crowding taxicab with the righteous wrath of all motor-maniacs: “What the hell d’ye think you’re doing?”
― Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery

“our civilization is very young. None of us live long enough to cope with too much. About the time we begin to get our thoughts straightened out we begin to go senile. Or, in the mean time, we've been knocked over by a taxicab or died of the plague or something else. We don't live that long.”
― J. Neil Schulman, The Robert Heinlein Interview And Other Heinleiniana

“Everything that NASA does—from the start by law—was to be open and unclassified and it has been. This is one of the things that I have cited—and that Arthur Clarke has cited—as being a payoff on the space program right now. Expensively as they've done it, nevertheless all that bread cast on the waters has already come back severalfold in the way of unclassified new technology that doesn't even have patents on it. You can get these things and you can use them all you please. I know that a lot of people are not aware of this but anyone in engineering that has any engineering interest is likely to be aware of it if he has taken the trouble to have himself placed on the mailing list.”
― J. Neil Schulman, The Robert Heinlein Interview And Other Heinleiniana

“There are a number of people who can't seem to realize that things could be mighty rough—even rougher than they are now—if there wasn't the slightest bit of deterrence.”
― J. Neil Schulman, The Robert Heinlein Interview And Other Heinleiniana

“The pages were dry and brittle, crackling as Renfrew turned them. From long exposure to the new methods of making books he had forgotten how a line of type could raise an impression on the other side of the page, as if the press of history was behind each word. The heavily leaded letters were broad and the ink a deep black. The ample margins, the precise celestial drawings, the heft of the volume in his hands, all seemed to speak of a time when the making of books was a signpost in an assumed march forward, a pressure on the future.”
― Gregory Benford, Timescape: A Novel

“the Law of Controversy: Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.”
― Gregory Benford, Timescape: A Novel

“The spirit of a good woman cannot be coded by nucleic acids arranged in a double helix, and only an overeducated fool could think so.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke. That doesn’t mean I don’t read and can’t think. I read everything from Giblett to Hoyle, from Sartre to Pauling. I read in the tub, I read on the john, I read in bed, I read when I eat alone, and I would read in my sleep if I could keep my eyes open.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“Pop says cops and courts no longer protect citizens, so citizens must protect themselves.” “I’m afraid he’s right.” “My husband, I can’t evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven’t lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs.” “Deety, your parents did okay.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“Ever hear the theory that in endless time and space, not only everything can happen but has happened and will happen? Mathematically, it is equivalent to Cantor’s Alephs, or higher infinities—and contains the same fallacy. But a brilliant writer named Brown wrote a fine story about it.” “Fredric Brown’s What Mad Universe—Yes, I know that book, Jake. A classic. You say it contains a fallacy? I was impressed by its logic.” “I didn’t say the story contained a fallacy; I said that the mathematical theory contained a fallacy. Mr. Brown’s story may be utterly real. Is real … if the formulation I’ve been thinking about has any merit.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“Oh, whoever thought up that nonsense about ‘parting is such sweet sorrow!’ ” “Chap by the name of Shakespeare,” I said. “But he was writing for money. Anything for a tear. Or a laugh. Either way, he got paid. He killed ’em off, at the end—and got paid for that, too.” “I know he did. Made me cry. What a shameful way for a grown man to make a living!”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“I deduced a minor truth: gems make fine accents for female beauty—but only as accents; beauty is fundamental. Better no jewelry than to deck a lovely woman like a Christmas tree.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“Jake, did you see anything? I didn’t.” “Nothing, Captain.” “Astrogator?” “Just blankness. Please, can we have the lights on?” I flipped on the overhead lights. “Science Officer?” “USS Enterprise being chased by a Klingon cruiser.” “Sharpie, that’s a false report. The Enterprise doesn’t run from just one Klingon cruiser.” “It was going boldly where no man has gone before. Aside from that, I didn’t see a thing. Let’s try another universe; this one stinks.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“My husband is a brute. And I’ve got a cruel stepmother just like Snow White. I mean, Cinderella. And my Pop thinks I’m imaginary. But I love you all anyway because you’re all I’ve got.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“I hadn’t been surprised when he kicked over his career to stand up for what he felt was right. Real officers did that.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“People treat me nice, I treat them nice. If they don’t, I walk away. I don’t worry much.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“Sharpie, I thought you liked Star Trek?” “I do. But I’ve seen five years of it and we’ve got our own Star Trek now.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes

“Hopelessness in a worthy cause is no excuse for abandoning it. My race fought without hope for many generations … then hope appeared. You and yours may do the same.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Pursuit of the Pankera: A Parallel Novel About Parallel Universes