Quotes by H. Beam Piper

“...you know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids.””

“Vengeance is a strange human motivation --- it can drive a man to do things which he neither would nor could achieve without it ... and because of that it lies behind some of the greatest sagas of human literature!””

“If you want to make an omelet, you have to break eggs.””

“Keep a government poor and weak and it’s your servant; let it get rich and powerful and it’s your master.””

“He actually knows what has to be done and how to do it, and he's going right ahead and doing it, without holding a dozen conferences and round-table discussions and giving everybody a fair and equal chance to foul things up for him. You know as well as I do that that's undemocratic.””

“I had a lot of other ideas, now and then, but every time I took a second look at one, it got sick and died.””

“Well, if a Little Fuzzy finds a door open, I’d like to know why he shouldn’t come in and look around.””

“What I object to is the way you're raiding the Sword-Worlds.""You're crazy!" Basil Gorram exploded."Young man," Harkaman reproved, "the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What do you mean, Lord Trask?””

“There was an ancient word, originating in one of the lost languages of Pre-Atomic Terra”

“On Aditya, such would be unthinkable; on Aditya, everybody respects authority. Whether it's respectable or not.””

“On Aditya," First Citizen Yaggo declared, "there are no classes, and on Aditya everybody works. 'From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.'""On Aditya," an elderly Counselor four places to the right of him said loudly to his neighbor, "they don't call them classes, they call them sociological categories, and they have nineteen of them. And on Aditya, they don't call them nonworkers, they call them occupational reservists, and they have more of them than we do.""But of course, I was born a king," Ranulf said sadly and nobly. "I have a duty to my people.""No, they don't vote at all," Lord Koreff was telling the Counselor on his left. "On Durendal, you have to pay taxes before you can vote.""On Aditya the crime of taxation does not exist," the First Citizen told the Prime Minister."On Aditya," the Counselor four places down said to his neighbor, "there's nothing to tax. The state owns all the property, and if the Imperial Constitution and the Space Navy let them, the State would own all the people, too. Don't tell me about Aditya. First big-ship command I had was the old Invictus, 374, and she was based on Aditya for four years, and I'd sooner have spent that time in orbit around Niffelheim."..."But if they don't have votes to sell, what do they live on?" a Counselor asked in bewilderment."The nobility supports them; the landowners, the trading barons, the industrial lords. The more nonworking adherents they have, the greater their prestige." And the more rifles they could muster when they quarreled with their fellow nobles, of course. "Beside, if we didn't do that, they'd turn brigand, and it costs less to support them than to have to hunt them out of the brush and hang them.""On Aditya, brigandage does not exist.""On Aditya, all the brigands belong to the Secret Police, only on Aditya they don't call them Secret Police, they call them Servants of the People, Ninth Category.””

“Does the Convocation make the laws?" Erskyll asked.Hozhet was perplexed. "Make laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We have laws."There were planets, here and there through the Empire, where an attitude like that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with elective parliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as many laws enacted during his term of office as possible.””

“It should belong to everybody. Let us call it the Commonwealth. That means something everybody owns in common.""Something everybody owns, nobody owns," Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected."Oh, no, Mykhyl; it will belong to everybody," Khreggor Chmidd told him earnestly. "But somebody will have to take care of it for everybody. That," he added complacently, "will be you and me and the rest of us here.""I believe," Yakoop Zhannar said, almost smiling, "that this freedom is going to be a wonderful thing. For us.””

“It may just be," he added, "that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as Homo sapiens terra is a wild animal, which he has always been and always will be until he evolves into something different in a million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, just as transmutation of elements was a physical-science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means.””