Don’t. Blink.
Gone was the twinkle that had cheerily lit up their conversation; now two dark fires of forged obsidian pinned Heinlein in his seat. In a blink Heinlein saw something else and understood—for one moment he saw the incredible focus of a mind pulling with all its force at one single thread of the fabric of the universe, and the incredible isolating lonely sadness of that challenge.
Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.
“Beware of first-hand ideas!” exclaimed one of the most advanced of them. “First-hand ideas do not really exist. They are but the physical impressions produced by love and fear, and on this gross foundation who could erect a philosophy? Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element — direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine — the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolu- tion. Through the medium of these ten great minds, the blood that was shed at Paris and the windows that were broken at Versailles will be clarified to an idea which you may employ most profitably in your daily lives.
Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they’re amiable and sometimes not.
“Come, come, Lieutenant. You of all people go by the book!”
“By the book?”
"By the book! Regulation 46A: “If transmissions are being monitored during battle --”
“…no uncoded messages on an open channel. You lied!”
“I exaggerated.”
I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It’s how rats are. It’s what makes them rats. But a human doesn’t run and hide in dark places, because he’s something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.
Long she stared while the triumph faded and the helpless frustration returned – and of all her turbulent thoughts only one infinitely bitter word passed her lips. "Liar!
“You mean life?”
“Yeah. Does it get easy?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Lie to me.”
“Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.”
“Liar.”
“You swine,” Yuri hissed. “You treacherous dog. You lied to me. You lied to all of us. Best damn liar I’ve ever met in my life. You played us all for fools!”
He pointed the finger of accusation at the list.
“Admit it!” he shouted. “It was all a goddam act!”
And sometimes you have to lie… because you can justify a lie if lives are riding on it. Even as you fight for, as the saying goes, truth and justice… even if you’re a lawyer who has sworn to live by the truth… you willingly bear false witness.
“Let’s take the fight to them! Out-think 'em, and vaporize them all…”
“That was my thought, but Massey had a more profitable plan. It’s slow, and painstaking, but truly fearsome…we’re going to sue them.”
“Yeeaargh! I just had chills run down my spine, and I don’t have a spine.”
Politicians were mostly people who’d had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.
You don’t just barge in on my father, and definitely not my mother. No way. You check with their personal secretaries first. Check out their moods. Then you make an appointment to slip in. There are basic things you learn when your parents run a planet.
Family matters must take priority over running a planet. Ix will be in good hands in your absence.
It surprised him how genuinely grateful he was that that hadn’t happened, but he wouldn’t blame Indy a bit for…holding a grudge against the man who’d planned to cold-bloodedly betray him, his family, and his entire planet.
Funny how little things like that can sour a friendship, he thought.
It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
We’re a team. It’s part of our job to help each other out, and to forgive each other quickly. Otherwise, we’d never get anything done.
“Look, that robot, DV-5, has six robots under it. And not just under it - they’re part of it…”
He watched the posturings of the robots on the visiplate. They were bronzy gleams of smooth motion against the shadowy crags of the airless asteroid. There was a marching formation now, and in their own dim body light, the rough-hewn walls of the mine tunnel swam past noiselessly, checkered with misty erratic blobs of shadow. They marched in unison, seven of them, with Dave at the head.
“Sizzling Saturn, we’ve got a lunatic robot on our hands!”