30 Quotes by H. Beam Piper

Well, that was one thing you had to give [Makann] credit for. He wanted to run out the Gilgameshers. Everybody was in favor of that.Now, Trask could remember something he'd gotten from Harkaman. There had been Hitler, back at the end of the First Century Pre-Atomic; hadn't he gotten into power because everybody was in favor of running out the Christians, or the Moslems, or the Albigensians, or somebody?

You know, it’s quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol – or he’ll try to eat the one you gave him!

English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results.

Keep a goverment poor and weak and it’s your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master.

Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.

Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilization, and wouldn’t like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it – luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?

It takes an awful lot of people, working together at an awful lot of jobs, to keep a civilization running.