Haldeman Quotes & Sayings

A sober, devout man will interpret 'God's will' soberly and devoutly. A fanatic, with bloodshot mind, will interpret 'God's will' fanatically. Men of extreme, illogical views will interpret 'God's will' in eccentric fashion. Kindly, charitable, generous men will interpret 'God's will' according to their character. — E. Haldeman-Julius

A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers. — Joe Haldeman

Heaven was a lovely, unspoiled Earth-like world; what Earth might have been like if men had treated her with compassion instead of lust. — Joe Haldeman

Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the apologists for the church exemption answer it? — E. Haldeman-Julius

You'd have to put yourself back in the 1960s to understand how separate from the mainstream of American life soldiers felt themselves to be, because we knew that students and others were demonstrating pretty violently against what we were doing. — Joe Haldeman

One rash person in the right place and earth could be a sterile cinder in seconds, but that's been more-or-less true for a century. — Joe Haldeman

But I decided that buying the gift was more for me than for her, anyhow. A commercial kind of substitute for prayer. — Joe Haldeman

Most science fiction is about white men who are 25 to 30, who are very smart, who face a physical problem and solve it. — Joe Haldeman

I die. O my hair falls out and my flesh rots and my bones are cracked by the hungry ta!a'an. He drops me behind him all around the forest and nothing will grow where his excrement from my marrow falls. As the years pass the forest dies from the poison of my remains. The soil washes into the sean and poisons the fish and all die. O the embarrassment. — Joe Haldeman

Reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted. — Joe Haldeman

Ben Franklin said:
"Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy wealthy and wise"
Lately I have read the advice given to William Randolph Hearst, when a young man, by his father:
"Go downtown at noon and rob the other fellows of what they have made during the morning. — E. Haldeman-Julius

Anyone who sees clearly sees chaos everywhere. Art is a way of temporarily setting order to confusion. Temporary and incomplete; that's why we never run out of new art. Anyone who comes to the tools of art without that sense of confusion is an invader. — Joe Haldeman

As he was pummeled into one tight spot after another, emerging each time breathless and in amazed chagrin, Bryan flushed, with spots of anger in his cheeks. His whole body sagged. Before our very eyes, he became a beaten man. — E. Haldeman-Julius

But you're absolutely sure we're right?' The question carried an intensity absent from the previous conversation. 'I remember talking with Henry Kissinger,' she continued, 'and he came up and said 'What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be re-elected? You were wrong on Haldeman.' And he seemed upset and said something about it being terribly, terribly unfair.'

If there's anyone who has not been wronged, Woodward said, it is Bob Haldeman. It was the most definite statement Woodward made during lunch.

'Oh, really,' said Mrs. Graham. 'I'm glad to hear you say that, because I was worried.' She paused. 'You've reassured me. You really have.' She looked at Woodward. Her face said, Do better.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

People had written about that, warfare based on attrition of wealth rather than loss of life. But it's always been easier to make new lives than new wealth. — Joe Haldeman

Saul's vitals were not human, but familiar:
he never told me he was from another world:
I never told him I was from his future. — Joe Haldeman

You cant put the toothpaste back in the tube. — H.R. Haldeman

I suspect that war will become obsolete only when something worse supercedes it. — Joe Haldeman

So here we were, fifty men and fifty women, with IQs over 150 and bodies of unusual health and strength, slogging elitely through the mud and slush of central Missouri, reflecting on the usefulness of our skill in building bridges on worlds where the only fluid is an occasional standing pool of liquid helium. — Joe Haldeman

I think any writer keeps going back to some basic theme. Sometimes it's autobiographical. I guess it usually is. — Joe Haldeman

I fell asleep and dreamed that I was a machine, mimicking the functions of life, creaking and clanking my clumsy way through a world, people too polite to say anything but giggling behind my back, and the little man who sat inside my head pulling the levers and clutches and watching the dials, he was hopelessly mad and was storing up hurts for the day-
Mandella - wake up, goddammit, your shift! — Joe Haldeman

War is the province of danger and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior, von Clausewitz maintained. — Joe Haldeman

All experience is memory, and so everything you write about is from memory-unless you're writing about typing. — Joe Haldeman

He wanted Jordan so badly, his fantasies consumed him. Whenever he reached out to touch something, paper, the phone, his steering wheel, there was a brief moment when he expected his hand to come in contact with the smooth silk of Jordan's skin. When he ate, his tongue instinctively sought the taste of Jordan. Whenever he picked up the phone, he expected to hear Jordan's voice. — Matthew Haldeman-Time

One thing most of us agree on is that the universe exists (people who deny that usually follow some trade other than science), so if some theoretical particle interaction would lead ultimately to the nonexistence of the universe, then you can save a lot of electricity by not trying to demonstrate it. — Joe Haldeman

I like the physical action of writing down by hand, and I don't just use it for writing my fiction. — Joe Haldeman

Doctors don't seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop. — Joe Haldeman

It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.' — Joe Haldeman

We move to Camp David and we hide. They can't get in there. — H.R. Haldeman

Table of Contents — Joe Haldeman

On Earth, we'd just use glue, but here the only fluid was helium, which has lots of interesting properties, but is definitely not sticky. — Joe Haldeman

There's a place for farts, and there's a place for sharts. — J.E. Haldeman

Don't worry about that, Man, just make out my ticket. — Joe Haldeman

-This is embarrassing. I uh, die and, um the last breath from my lungs is a terrible acid. It melts the seaward wall of the city and a hurricane comes and washes it away. All die. O the embarrassment
-You're much better at that than he was. — Joe Haldeman

To be true to the mythical conception of a God is to be false to the interests of mankind. — E. Haldeman-Julius

One cannot make command decisions simply by assessing the tactical situation and going ahead with whatever course of action will do the most harm to the enemy with a minimum of death and damage to your own men and materiel. Modern warfare has become very complex, especially during the last century. Wars are won not by a simple series of battles won, but by a complex interrelationship among military victory, economic pressures, logistic maneuvering, access to the enemy's information, political postures - dozens, literally dozens of factors. — Joe Haldeman

I was too old-fashioned male-chauv to allow that; we discussed for a minute and I wound up with the couch — Joe Haldeman

If I had done nothing more than bring McCabe's talents to the attention of what has become a world-wide audience--if I had done only this job, I believe I'd have established myself as a force for mass education and enlightenment with immediate and constructive effects on the thinking portion of the population. My association with McCabe has been enough to build a career for anyone.

{Julius on legendary scholar Joseph McCabe} — E. Haldeman-Julius

Marianne, how's your statistics?" "Math is my worst subject." "But you can program?" "Of course. I'm not illiterate. — Joe Haldeman

She said she promised her mother that she would never drink a drop of wine. That was the drop she never drank. — Joe Haldeman

the Aleph-Null campaign. — Joe Haldeman

You couldn't blame it all on the military, though. The evidence they presented for the Taurans' having been responsible for the earlier casualties was laughably thin. The few people who pointed this out were ignored. The fact was, Earth's economy needed a war, and this one was ideal. It gave a nice hole to throw buckets of money into, but would unify humanity rather than dividing it. The — Joe Haldeman

"Would you tax God?" asks a defender of church tax exemption. Well, if there were a God he should be able to pay his own way and support his own business. If not, then he should do like other business men and close up shop. — E. Haldeman-Julius

I have always valued quiet, and the eternity of it that I face is no more dreadful than the eternity of quiet that preceded my birth. — Joe Haldeman

Fortunately, there are old terrors and powers that religion no longer can exercise so effectively as it did only a few score years ago. But the atmosphere and the attitude of bigotry remain. If religion cannot ordinarily invoke the armed force of law to punish heretics, it still plays upon the psychology of fear and predominantly its influence is to frighten men and distort their views and poison every process of their reasoning. — E. Haldeman-Julius

Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back in. — H.R. Haldeman

I tried to get through to my brother, Mike, on the Moon, but the phone company wouldn't let me place the call until I had signed a contract and posted a $25,000 bond. — Joe Haldeman

A good title is a work of a genius! — E. Haldeman-Julius

I'd love to be able to write an in-depth piece of what causes men like [Richard] Nixon and [H.R.]Haldeman and [John] Ehrlichman and all the rest of them not only to run, but what causes us to vote for them. — Rod Serling

In his book The Shadow Presidents, author Michael Medved relates the extreme disappointment of H.R. Haldeman over his failure to implement his plan to link up all the homes in America by coaxial cable. In Haldeman's words, "There would be two-way communication. Through computer, you could use your television set to order up whatever you wanted. The morning paper, entertainment services, shopping services, coverage of sporting events and public events...Just as Eisenhower linked up the nation's cities by highways so that you could get there, the Nixon legacy would have linked them by cable communication so you wouldn't have to go there." One can almost see the dreamy eyes of Nixon and Haldeman as they sat around discussing a plan that would eliminate the need for newspapers, seemingly oblivious to its Big Brother aspects. Fortunately the Watergate scandal intervened, and Nixon was forced to resign before "the Wired Nation" could be hooked up. — David Wallechinsky

When I first started working at MIT, back in the '80s, our writing department had a joint cocktail party with the Harvard writing department. It was kind of oil-and-water. — Joe Haldeman

I watched her walk away and thought that if anybody could make a fighting suit look sexy, it'd be Sean. But even she couldn't. — Joe Haldeman

There's no such thing as writing about the future. The future hasn't happened yet. — Joe Haldeman

You want me to invite him to dinner."
"I want you to invite him to dinner," she agreed.
"You know," he said, "most gay men don't have mothers who are this enthusiastic about their love lives."
"That's probably true," she said. "You're one of the lucky ones. — Matthew Haldeman-Time

[Spielberg and I] had a disagreement over what God was ... He thought God was Stephen Spielberg, but that thought had never occurred to me. — Joe Haldeman

Our country use satellites to spy on its own people?'
'Well, the satellites go all around the world. They just don't bother to turn them off over the US. — Joe Haldeman

We are well aware that religion is not as bad an influence as it was a short time ago, as history is counted. But it is a sufficiently bad influence even in modern times, and its reduced viciousness (in practice) is due plainly enough to its reduced power. — E. Haldeman-Julius

It is an absurd fiction that the churches are useful. They are nothing more than propaganda centers for superstitious faiths and doctrines. Church members have a right to believe in and propagate their various doctrines. But they should pay every item of the cost, of this propaganda, including fair taxation for all church property. — E. Haldeman-Julius

I die. I breathe in and breahe in and cannot exhale. I explode all over my friends. They forget my name and pretend it is dung. They wash off in the square and the well becomes polluted. All die. O the embarrassment. — Joe Haldeman

But love, he said, love was a fragile blossom; love was a delicate crystal; love was an unstable reaction with a half-life of about eight months. Bullshit, I said, and accused him of wearing cultural blinders; thirty centuries of prewar society taught that love was one thing that could last to the grave and even beyond and if he had been born instead of hatched he would know that without being told! — Joe Haldeman

Most of human history had been industry versus nature, with industry winning. — Joe Haldeman

-I die. My footprints are cursed. I walk around the village not knowing that all who cross where I have been will stay in estrous zero and bear no young. Eventually all die. O the embarrassment. — Joe Haldeman

Heterosexuality is considered an emotional dysfunction. Relatively easy to cure. — Joe Haldeman

It is natural that people should differ most, and most violently, about the unknowable ... There is all the room in the world for divergence of opinion about something that, so far as we can realistically perceive, does not exist. — E. Haldeman-Julius

But I remember another image from Earth: the rich dark green grass that grew in graveyards. — Joe Haldeman

Why should the residence of a preacher be untaxed? Useful citizens must pay taxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher - actually and notoriously the least useful member of the community - lives in a tax-free dwelling. — E. Haldeman-Julius

If I had had a thing like an iPad when I was a kid, then I never would have gotten into the habit of writing things down by hand. — Joe Haldeman

Theism tells men that they are the slaves of a God. Atheism assures men that they are the investigators and users of nature. — E. Haldeman-Julius

Perhaps all great loves are that, a secret that can't be shared. — Joe Haldeman

I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer. — Joe Haldeman

The brain isn't very much like a computer, although it doesn't do a bad job, considering that it's built by unskilled labor and programmed more by pure chance than anything else. — Joe Haldeman

Science fiction as a genre has the benefit of being able to act as parable, to set up a story at a remove so you can make a real-world point without people throwing up a wall in front of it. — Joe Haldeman

We're headed for Aleph-7. Panty raid. New slang term for the type of operation whose main object was to gather Tauran artifacts, and prisoners if possible. I tried to find out where the term came from, but the one explanation I got was really idiotic. — Joe Haldeman

Every band is allowed to do things how they want - including getting on stage in pink pasiley suits and doing TIP TOE THROUGH THE TULIPS. — J.E. Haldeman

My back pay came to $892,746,012. Not in the form of bales of currency, fortunately; on Heaven they used an electronic credit exchange, so I carried my fortune around in a little machine with a digital readout. To buy something you punched in the vendor's credit number and the amount of purchase; the sum was automatically shuffled from your account to his. The machine was the size of a slender wallet and coded to your thumbprint. — Joe Haldeman

Sitting here in a bar with an asexual cyborg who is probably the only other normal person on the whole goddamned planet. — Joe Haldeman

Well, there's always Nevada," Benny said. "You can buy anything from a hand laser to an atom bomb there. — Joe Haldeman

Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction. — Joe Haldeman

Don't take our word for it. Read the Bible itself. Read the statements of preachers. And you will understand that God is the most desperate character, the worst villain in all fiction. — E. Haldeman-Julius

I've always thought the pre-Revolutionary system was more elegant, but it did concentrate too much power in the hands of one person. Keyes says that at least you knew who the man was then. The person who represents a Lobby in Congress is never the one who makes the real decisions; the real leaders are rarely identifiable and are never held responsible for their actions. If a puppet gets in trouble they sacrifice him and haul out another. I don't doubt that that's true, at least some of the time, but it's certainly not the whole story. If a Lobby consistently acts against the public interest, its voting power dwindles away. Keyes says that's a cynical illusion: all the polls reflect is how much money a Lobby has put into advertising. — Joe Haldeman

When Richard M. Nixon resigned and Ford became the 38th president of the United States, the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office, of which I was a member, was preparing for the criminal trials of Nixon's top aides - H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell. — Richard Ben-Veniste

Oriental marionette imitating an occidental gesture. — Joe Haldeman

[H]is skin was the color of age and his features the shape of a saint's. — Joe Haldeman

Haldeman is the only man in America in this generation who let his hair grow for a courtroom appearance. — Mary McGrory

The church has contributed nothing to civilization. It has progressed somewhat, and it has become a little more decent, in reflection of the movements of civilization that have taken place outside of the church and usually in the face of the strong opposition of the church. But the church has always resisted the process of civilization. It has struggled to the last ditch, by fair means and foul, to preserve as long as it could the vestiges of ancient and medieval theology, with all the puerile moralities and harsh customs and medieval styles of belief. — E. Haldeman-Julius

Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human. — Joe Haldeman

Once at Haldeman's 7:45 a.m. senior staff meeting, Moynihan grew so frustrated at the wandering discussion that he raised his clenched fist, brought it down hard on the table, and shouted, "Fuck!" There was immediate silence. Butterfield watched everyone turn to Rose Woods, the only woman at the meeting, in horror and embarrassment. — Bob Woodward

different. Warmer.' He paused to let that soak — Joe Haldeman

-I die. Before I die my body turns hair-side-in. People come from everywhere to see the insides of themselves. But the sight makes them lose the will, and all die. O the embarrassment. — Joe Haldeman

Hemingway was a jerk. I mean he was really a great jerk. He was a good writer, and he did all sorts of things that I would never have the courage to do, but I don't think I'd enjoy being in the same room with him. He's not my kind of person. — Joe Haldeman

Atheism is a conclusion reached by the most reasonable methods and one which is not asserted dogmatically but is explained in its every feature by the light of reason. The atheist does not boast of knowing in a vainglorious, empty sense. He understands by knowledge the most reasonable and clear and sound position one can take on the basis of all the evidence at hand. This evidence convinces him that theism is not true, and his logical position, then, is that of atheism.
We repeat that the atheist is one who denies the assumptions of theism. he asserts, in other words, that he doesn't believe in a God because he has no good reason for believing in a God. That's atheism
and that's good sense. — E. Haldeman-Julius

The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.
Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me? — Joe Haldeman

Jordan, there isn't a straight woman or gay man alive who wouldn't drop everything to have dinner with you. I've been in this business for all of my life, and I know the difference between people who pretend to like you to get ahead, and people who are actually interested in getting to know you. Patrick wants to get to know you. Preferably naked, but that's up to you."
"I can't wait until you're old enough to be senile and start saying these things in public."
"I'm very lucky to have such a loving son. — Matthew Haldeman-Time

-I die. I,uh, have a terrible fever in my head and it gets hotter and hotter and hotter until my head is a fire, a forge, a star. I set the world on fire and everybody dies. O the embarrassment. — Joe Haldeman

Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have been sincere. And so have fools. — E. Haldeman-Julius

Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the collection boxes, whether we go to church or not and whether we are interested in the church or not. It is systematic and complete robbery, from which none of us escapes. — E. Haldeman-Julius

I met Heinlein after 'The Forever War' had won the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He shook my hand and said he loved the book so much, he'd read it three times. — Joe Haldeman

We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted. — H.R. Haldeman

There's something special about writing by hand, writing with a fountain pen, and there's something special about writing into a book, to take a blank book and turn it into an actual book. — Joe Haldeman

In the few moments I lay awake after finally lying down, the thought came to me that the next time I closed my eyes could well be the last. And partly because of the drug hangover, mostly because of the past day's horrors, I found that I really didn't give a shit. — Joe Haldeman