H. Beam Piper Quotes & Sayings

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

Simon, speaking as one sovereign prince to another, you have a lot to learn. You've learned one important lesson already, that a ruler must be willing to use force and shed blood to enforce his rule. You have to learn, too, that a ruler cannot afford to be guided by his fears of what people will say about him. Not even what history will say about him. A ruler's only judge is himself." Bentrik slid the transpex visor of his helmet up and down experimentally, checked the chambers of his pistol and carbine. "All that matters to me is the peace and well-being of Marduk. I'll have to talk it over with ... with my only judge. Well, let's go." The — H. Beam Piper

went across the more civilized Third — H. Beam Piper

People have to learn to live with newly-discovered facts; if they don't, they die of them. — H. Beam Piper

Everything has to be at once for six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age. — H. Beam Piper

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

Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it--luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for? — H. Beam Piper

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

Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers. — H. Beam Piper

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

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

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

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

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

I suppose there's always a place for Judas, at any table." * — H. Beam Piper

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? — H. Beam Piper

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

Well, that was one thing you had to give [Makann] credit for. He wanted to run out the Gilgameshers. Everybody was in favor of that.

Now, Trask could remember something he'd gotten from Harkaman. There had been Hitler, back at the end of the First Century Pre-Atomic; hadn't he gotten into power because everybody was in favor of running out the Christians, or the Moslems, or the Albigensians, or somebody? — H. Beam Piper

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

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

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

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

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

Sanity, it would seem, was a dangerously contagious disease. — H. Beam Piper

Most of the Mardukans were laughing, now. Some of them were accusing him of being just too utterly ridiculous.

"Why, the people are the Government. The people would not legislate themselves into slavery."

He wished Otto Harkaman were there. All he knew of history was the little he had gotten from reading some of Harkaman's books, and the long, rambling conversations aboard ship in hyperspace or in the evenings at Rivington. But Harkaman, he was sure, could have furnished hundreds of instances, on scores of planets and over ten centuries of time, in which people had done exactly that and hadn't known what they were doing, even after it was too late. — H. Beam Piper

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

On Aditya, such would be unthinkable; on Aditya, everybody respects authority. Whether it's respectable or not. — H. Beam Piper

I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself. — H. Beam Piper

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

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

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. — H. Beam Piper

You know what English is? The result of the efforts of Norman men-at-arms to make dates with Saxon barmaids. — H. Beam Piper

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

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

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

Keep a goverment poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master. — H. Beam Piper

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

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

if Rand was equal to Old — H. Beam Piper

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. — H. Beam Piper