Space Cadet

“People tend to fall into three psychological types, all differently motivated. There is the type, motivated by economic factors, money...And there is the type motivated by ‘face,’ or pride. This type is a spender, fighter, boaster, lover, sportsman, gambler; he has a will to power and an itch for glory. And there is the professional type, which claims to follow a code of ethics rather than simply seeking money or glory—priests and ministers, teachers, scientists, medical men, some artists and writers. The idea is that such a man believes that he is devoting his life to some purpose more important than his individual self. You follow me?”

Wong shook his head sadly. “I sometimes think that modern education is deliberately designed to handicap a boy.”

Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth—you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers.

“I wish Doc Pickering was here.”

“Yeah, and if fish had feet, they’d be mice.”

Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the past with less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on the spot.

A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behavior and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalize original and imaginative thinking.

The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy.

“Sometimes I think,” he told Tex, “that Th’Wing thinks that I am an idiot studying hard to become a moron—but flunking the course.”