How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?
— Doctor Pinero, Life Line, 1939
You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
— Logic of Empire (1941), Precursor to Hanlon's Razor
Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
— Assignment in Eternity (1953)
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.
— The Rolling Stones (1952)
Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.
— Double Star (1956)
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
— Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show — it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
— The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950)note