H. Beam Piper Quotes

#1. You know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids.

H. Beam Piper

#2. Then the Yo-Yo was coming around again, and Vann Larch was saying, "Gehenna with this fooling around! I'll fix the expurgated unprintability!

H. Beam Piper

#3. I suppose there's always a place for Judas, at any table." *

H. Beam Piper

#4. 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.

H. Beam Piper

#5. if Rand was equal to Old

H. Beam Piper

#6. Sanity, it would seem, was a dangerously contagious disease.

H. Beam Piper

#7. You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol - or he'll try to eat the one you gave him!

H. Beam Piper

#8. Everything has to be at once for six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age.

H. Beam Piper

#9. English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Angle bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.

H. Beam Piper

#10. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

H. Beam Piper

#11. You show me ten men who cherish some religious doctrine or political ideology, and I'll show you nine men whose minds are utterly impervious to any factual evidence which contradicts their beliefs, and who regard the producer of such evidence as a criminal who ought to be suppressed.

H. Beam Piper

#12. It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face
the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.

H. Beam Piper

#13. went across the more civilized Third

H. Beam Piper

#14. Zealous statesmen perhaps did more mischief than anything in the Galaxy--with the possible exception of procrastinating soldiers. That could indicate the fundamental difference between statecraft and war.

H. Beam Piper

#15. Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.

H. Beam Piper

#16. these ideological cliques form in a government--or any other organization. Subordinates are always chosen for their agreement with the views of their superiors, and the extremists always get to the top and shove the moderates under or out.

H. Beam Piper

#17. You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous.

"Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised. "Then your democracy's a farce, and the people are only free on sufferance. If their ballots aren't secured by arms, they're worthless.

H. Beam Piper

#18. Keep a goverment poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master.

H. Beam Piper

#19. Keep a government poor and weak and it's your servant; let it get rich and powerful and it's your master.

H. Beam Piper

#20. You have ability and people who don't never forgive you for it. Your very existence is a constant reproach to them.

H. Beam Piper

#21. I wanted to find out why. But when Professor Dandrik saw what was happening, he became almost hysterical, and ordered the accelerator shut down as though he were afraid it would blow up in his face."
"I think it has blown up in his face," Prince Travann said quietly.

H. Beam Piper

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

H. Beam Piper

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

H. Beam Piper

#24. Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around.

H. Beam Piper

#25. And when someone makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him
he's crazy. Ask him what he means.

H. Beam Piper

#26. 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!

H. Beam Piper

#27. 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.

H. Beam Piper

#28. Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers.

H. Beam Piper

#29. Young Mr. Conn Maxwell, who has just returned from Terra, needs no introduction to any of you," he began. Then, having established that, he took the next ten minutes to introduce Conn.

H. Beam Piper

#30. I'm sorry, Prince Edvard. You had a wonderful civilization here on Marduk. You could have made almost anything of it. But it's too late now. You've torn down the gates; the barbarians are in.

H. Beam Piper

#31. People have to learn to live with newly-discovered facts; if they don't, they die of them.

H. Beam Piper

#32. English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results.

H. Beam Piper

#33. I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.

H. Beam Piper