29 Quotes by Kenneth Roberts

I wouldn't care to shoot my own townsmen over a difference of opinion about politics. Keep 'em yourself if you think you need 'em; but I suggest you'll be better off to put 'em away where you can't get at 'em. The trouble with a pistol is that if you show it, you've got to use it, and once you use it you've committed yourself.

If I was a private individual, I'd be more careful; but being as I'm a government, I'm privileged to make a God-damned fool of myself in any way I choose, especially by spending a lot more money than I've got or ever will have, and promising to do things that I ain't got a chance of doing.

On every side of us are men who hunt perpetually for their personal northwest passage, too often sacrificing health, strength, and life itself to the search; and who shall say they are not happier in their vain but hopeful quest than wiser, duller folks who sit at home, venturing nothing and, with sour laughs, deriding the seekers for that fabled thoroughfare?

I'll never use force to try to make my enemies think the way I think, George - partly because I don't believe in it, and partly because it's useless. You can't destroy ideas by force, and you can't hide 'em by silence.

People never believe anything - except scandal - when they first heart it.

People never believe anything - except scandal - when they first hear it.

A community is an informally constituted group, larger than the family, within which there is a distinctive pattern of interaction, whose members share a feeling of common identity which may be no more than a simple recognition of friendship, and which possesses its own sub-culture, defining how the members of the community should conduct themselves and behave towards one another during their free time.

Never until the wounded came back from Bunker Hill had I realized the lengths of which a determined minority will go in order to achieve its ends. For the first time I understood one of the fundamentals of warfare: that armies cannot be raised by nations or parties unless the rage of the people is first kindled by lies and name-calling.

My God, Judge, do men believe whatever lie they hear about an enemy?