Frederik Pohl

Anybody who sets out to turn the world upside down has no right to complain if he gets caught in its gears.

She described herself as happy. This diagnosis did not come from any welling up of joy inside herself. It came from the observed fact, looking at herself objectively, that whenever she decided she wanted something she always got it, and what other definition of happiness could there be?

Our representative government now is perhaps more representative than it has ever been before in history. It is not necessarily representative per capita, but it most surely is ad valorem. If you like philosophical problems. Here is one for you: should each human being’s vote register alike, as the lawbooks pretend and as some say the founders of our nation desired? Or should a vote be weighted according to the wisdom, the power, and the influence—that is, the money—of the voter?

Think of a frog as a functional machine designed to produce baby frogs. This is the Darwinian view, and is really what evolution is all about. In order to succeed, the frog has to stay alive long enough to grow up and get pregnant or get some female frog pregnant. That means it has to do two things. It has to eat. And it has to avoid being eaten.

“Would it help, do you think, if I canceled this operation and tried to get you, the other you, on the phone? President-to-President? A one-on-one talk?”

“Why, I think that would depend on what you said, Mr. President,” she said thoughtfully.

“I’d say the truth!” he barked. “Might be an interesting change, at that.”

All of them had been so tested and retested that they had acquired considerable skill in answering test questions the way the examiners wanted them answered.

Even money, thought Roger on the way back to his own office, is not a bad bet. Of course, it depends on the stakes.

It is a constant wonder to me how crazy a sane person can get.

He drew himself up and said with dignity: “We administer justice, Mr. Courtenay. And an ancient, basic tenet of justice is: ‘Better that one thousand innocents suffer unjustly than one guilty person be permitted to escape.’”

That’s power, Mitch, absolute power. And you know the old saying. Power ennobles. Absolute power ennobles absolutely.

A soft drink and a couple of Twinkies didn’t make a meal, but at least they informed my stomach my intentions were good.

It was an appeal to reason, and they’re always dangerous. You can’t trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.