Time Enough for Love

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of.

— Time Enough for Love

Oh, I have strong opinions, but a thousand reasoned opinions are never equal to one case of diving in and finding out. Galileo proved that and it may be the only certainty we have.

— Time Enough for Love

I learned centuries back that there is no privacy in any society crowded enough to need IDs. A law guaranteeing privacy simply insures that bugs — microphones and lenses and so forth — are that much harder to spot.

— Time Enough for Love

Security people always spy on their bosses; they can’t help it, it’s a syndrome that goes with the job.

— Time Enough for Love

There’s no virtue in being old, it just takes a long time.

— Time Enough for Love

Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn — when they do, which isn't often — on their own, the hard way.

— Time Enough for Love

“Then you believe in an afterlife?”“Slow up! I don’t ‘believe’ in anything. I know certain things — little things, not the Nine Billion Names of God — from experience. But I have no beliefs. Belief gets in the way of learning.

— Time Enough for Love

I spent my boyhood the way every boy does — trying to keep my elders from finding out what I was up to.

— Time Enough for Love

“Common sense?”“Son, that phrase is self-contradictory. ‘Sense’ is never ‘common.’”

— Time Enough for Love

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

— Time Enough for Love

Lazarus expressed a rhetorical and physiologically improbable wish.

— Time Enough for Love

The purpose of my government is never to do good, but simply to refrain from doing evil.

— Time Enough for Love

Progress doesn't come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

— Time Enough for Love

He enjoyed it, for every hour in school was an hour sitting down doing nothing harder than reading. Before and after school he had to do chores on his family’s farm, which he hated, as they were what was known as “honest work” — meaning hard, dirty, inefficient, and ill-paid — and also involved getting up early, which he hated even worse.

— Time Enough for Love

Do not ask why; it was no more subject to rational explanation than is any other branch of theology.

— Time Enough for Love

But David, like all true geniuses, paid only pragmatic attention to rules made by other people — he obeyed the Eleventh Commandment and never got caught.

— Time Enough for Love

Don’t ask me why. It was Navy policy and therefore did not have a reason.

— Time Enough for Love

A capsule description of most human “progress”: By the time you learn how, it’s too late.

— Time Enough for Love

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

— Time Enough for Love

Whoring is like military service, Ira — okay in the upper brackets, not so good lower down.

— Time Enough for Love

Whores perform the same function as priests, Ira, but far more thoroughly.

— Time Enough for Love

‘Put not your faith in princes,’ Ira; since they don’t produce, they always steal.

— Time Enough for Love

In the first place, very little thinking was ever done in English; it is not a language suited to logical thought. Instead, it’s an emotive lingo beautifully adapted to concealing fallacies. A rationalizing language, not a rational one.

— Time Enough for Love

“I'm still learning English. By the naturalistic method the way a child learns his milk language. No grammar, no syntax, no dictionary — just listen and talk and read it. Acquire new words by context. By that method I acquired a feeling that ‘love' means the shared ecstasy that can be attained through sex. Is that right?”“Son, I hate to say this — because, if you've been reading a lot of English, I see how you reached that opinion — but you are one hundred percent wrong.”

— Time Enough for Love

If there is a purpose in life more important than two people cooperating in making a baby, all the philosophers in history haven’t been able to find it.

— Time Enough for Love

Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth — but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three.

— Time Enough for Love

Respect for laws is a pragmatic matter. Women know this instinctively; that’s why they are all smugglers. Men often believe — or pretend — that the “Law” is something sacred, or at least a science — an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.

— Time Enough for Love

They did ask, sometimes, and accepted my decision without argument. But I could see that they did not always believe me. That pleased me; they were starting to think for themselves — didn’t matter if they were wrong.

— Time Enough for Love

That was encouraging; a person who can read and write and has a head for math can learn anything she needs to know.

— Time Enough for Love

He shut up, realizing that grim old Mother Nature, red of tooth and claw, invariably punished damfools who tried to ignore Her or to repeal Her ordinances; he need not interfere.

— Time Enough for Love

Every so often some idiot tries to abolish marriage. Such attempts work as well as repealing the law of gravity, making pi equal to three point zero, or moving mountains by prayer.

— Time Enough for Love

Latin is majestic, especially when you don’t understand it.

— Time Enough for Love

Half the battle with any culture is knowing its taboos.

— Time Enough for Love

Privacy is as necessary as company; you can drive a man crazy by depriving him of either.

— Time Enough for Love

“She loved them,” said Minerva.“Yes, she did, dear, by the exact definition of love. Llita placed their welfare and happiness ahead of her own.”

— Time Enough for Love

Llita was well above average smart but suffered from the democratic fallacy: the notion that her opinion was as good as anyone’s — while Joe suffered from the aristocratic fallacy: He accepted the notion of authority in opinion.

— Time Enough for Love

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

— Time Enough for Love

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.

— Time Enough for Love

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.

— Time Enough for Love

History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.

— Time Enough for Love

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

— Time Enough for Love

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

— Time Enough for Love

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

— Time Enough for Love

A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.

— Time Enough for Love

A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.

— Time Enough for Love

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

— Time Enough for Love

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

— Time Enough for Love

What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell," avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!

— Time Enough for Love

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent — it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

— Time Enough for Love

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

— Time Enough for Love

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

— Time Enough for Love

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Time Enough for Love

Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.

— Time Enough for Love

The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.

— Time Enough for Love

The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.

— Time Enough for Love

The shamans are forever yacking about their snake-oil "miracles." I prefer the Real McCoy — a pregnant woman.

— Time Enough for Love

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.

— Time Enough for Love

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

— Time Enough for Love

One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.

— Time Enough for Love

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

— Time Enough for Love

“My mistake and it may be my last one.”“Sorry, dear. But there is always a last mistake.”

— Time Enough for Love

Love is what still goes on when you are not horny.

— Time Enough for Love

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow if tomorrow might improve the odds.

— Time Enough for Love

Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.

— Time Enough for Love

God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good — and is no sillier than any other theology.

— Time Enough for Love

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

— Time Enough for Love

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

— Time Enough for Love

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

— Time Enough for Love

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors — and miss.

— Time Enough for Love

Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime — and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.

— Time Enough for Love

Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.

— Time Enough for Love

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: “Of course it is none of my business but — ” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don’t use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

— Time Enough for Love

Natural laws have no pity.

— Time Enough for Love

Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.

— Time Enough for Love

Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.

— Time Enough for Love

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.

— Time Enough for Love

Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

— Time Enough for Love

“I came, I saw, she conquered.” (The original Latin seems to have been garbled.)

— Time Enough for Love

The historicity of Jesus is the slipperiest question in all history because for centuries the question couldn’t be raised. They would hang you for asking — or burn you at the stake.

— Time Enough for Love

If heredity were not overwhelmingly more important than environment, you could teach calculus to a horse.

— Time Enough for Love

I see no use in written marriage contracts; they can’t be enforced...whereas if the partners want to make it work, no written instrument is necessary.

— Time Enough for Love

A man who refuses to take his own death into account in making plans is a fool. A self-centered fool who does not love anyone.

— Time Enough for Love

It is hard to shake off any taboos a child is indoctrinated with in his earliest years. Even if he learns later that they are nonsense.

— Time Enough for Love

I'll find a tutor — no, Laz, not a horizontal one. Don’t you ever think about anything else?(Come to think of it, dear, what else is worth thinking about? Money?)

— Time Enough for Love

He saw that he had committed the prime sin against survival: He had indulged in wishful thinking.

— Time Enough for Love

The best thing about the future was that it was unknown. Cassandra’s one good quality was that she was never believed.

— Time Enough for Love