Murray Leinster

Quotes

1. There was bitter resistance to the idea. It was demanded that Burke justify his views in a more reasonable way than by mere demonstration that they worked.

   p. 65

2. 

   He needed some rather extensive changes in the relationship of the cosmos to himself.

3. 

   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.

4. 

   As a young man he was considered promising. If he had been interested in such matters, he might have had a moderately successful career in politics, as politics was practiced in his nation. But he liked things. Real things.

   p. 84

5. 

   “It isn’t reasonable!” insisted Holmes. “It doesn’t make sense!”

   “The question,” observed Burke, “isn’t whether it makes sense, but whether it’s fact.”

   p. 96

6. 

   “You are wonderful!” she said with conviction.

   “I used to cherish that illusion myself,” said Hoddan.

7. 

   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.

8. 

   They raise the question of whether I’ve been crazy, and am suddenly sane, or whether I’ve been sane up to now, and have suddenly gone crazy.

   p. 12

9. 

   “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!”

10. 

    “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.

11. 

    For once, no eminent figure assumed the undignified pose involved in standing on one’s dignity.

    p. 118

12. 

    Hoddan felt the anger any man feels when he sees betrayal of that honor a competent machine represents.