# The Pirates of Zan - Author: [Murray Leinster](https://www.leafyquotes.com/murray-leinster.md) - Quotes: 24 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/murray-leinster/the-pirates-of-zan ## Quotes > There was a beautiful row. You’ve really scared people, Hoddan! You deserve well of the republic! Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain. > He irritably suspected himself of a tendency to make enemies unnecessarily. > The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them. > Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him. > Again time passed. In one of the remoter galaxies a supernova flamed, and on a rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed experimentally—and to mankind the one event was just as important as the other. > Twilight remained, a fairy half-light in which all things looked much more charming than they really were. > There are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn’t realize that there are people so stupid you can’t show them anything. > But it might not be true enough. It might be less than...well...sufficiently true in a particular instance. > This was the second time in his life he’d been on a horse. It was two too many. > It is the custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse where women are concerned. > He signed himself prince of this, lord of that, baron of the other thing and claimant to the dukedom of something else. > A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. > He needed some rather extensive changes in the relationship of the cosmos to himself. > From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss. > “You are wonderful!” she said with conviction. > > “I used to cherish that illusion myself,” said Hoddan. > He’d gone to Walden in the hope of achievement. There, of course, he failed because in a free economy industrialists consider that freedom is the privilege to be stupid without penalty. In other than free economies, of course, stupidity is held to be the duty of administrators. But Hoddan now believed himself in the fascinating situation of having knowledge and abilities which were needed by people who knew their need. > “You’ve got to do something!” insisted Fani. “I saw Father talking to them! He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he’s planning some skulduggery!” > “It’s no use!” it was the custom of his grandfather to say. “There’s not a bit o’ use in having brains! All they do is get you into trouble! A lucky idiot’s ten times better off than a brainy man with a jinx on him! A smart man starts thinkin’, and he thinks himself into a jail cell if his luck is bad, and good luck’s wasted on him because it ain’t reasonable and he don’t believe in it when it happens! It’s taken me a lifetime to keep my brains from ruinin’ me! No, sir! I hope none o’ my descendants inherit my brains! I pity ‘em if they do!” > > Hoddan had been on Darth not more than four hours. In that time he’d found himself robbed, had resented it, had been the object of two spirited attempts at assassination, had ridden an excruciating number of miles on an unfamiliar animal, and now found himself in a stone dungeon and deprived of food lest feeding him obligate his host not to cut his throat. And he’d gotten into this by himself! He’d chosen it! He’d practically asked for it! > > He began strongly to share his grandfather’s disillusioned view of brains. > Hoddan felt the anger any man feels when he sees betrayal of that honor a competent machine represents. > When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked. > He was in a state of doubt which passed very well for modesty. > “Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good Old Days?” > > “I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir—” > > “It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable. > Hoddan fumbled for her meaning. It wasn’t quite an apology for trying to get him killed. But at least it was a disclaimer of future intentions in that direction. > It couldn’t happen! Hoddan couldn’t conceive of such a thing. But a recently developed pessimism suggested that since everything else, to date, had been to his disadvantage, this was probably a catastrophe also.