E.E. "Doc" Smith Quotes

It's much better technique to learn things among friends than enemies," Kinnison laughed.

Something like elephantiasis, only worse, affecting both arms and both legs. Drastic amputations indicated. Eye-sockets. Burns. Multiple and compound fractures. Punctured and incised wounds. Traumatism, ecchymosis, extensive extravasations, oedema. Profound systemic shock. The prognosis, however, seems to be favorable,

not for the fractional second necessary for inertialess flight could the two win clear. Then Kinnison sent out his SOS. "A Lensman calling help! A Lensman calling help!" he broadcast with the full power of mind and Lens, and Immediately a sharp, clear voice poured into his brain. "Coming, wearer of the Lens!

Life force. I would have lots of that, of course." She did not blush, but Kit did. "Life force" was a pitifully inadequate term indeed for that which Civilization's only Lensman–mother had in such measure, but they both knew what it was.

there is only one power which is at one and the same time illimitable and yet finite; insatiable yet satisfying; one which, while eternal, yet invariably returns to its possessor the true satisfaction of real accomplishment in exact ratio to the effort expended upon it. That power is the power of the mind.

it has been argued that sexual equality is the most important criterion of that which we know as Civilization.

That you can now be called adult does not mean you have achieved your full power, only that you are able to acquire other and larger powers.

Who is to watch the watchmen?

She looks like an angel, but take it from me, she isn't. She's one of the slimiest snakes that ever crawled — she's so low she could put on a tall silk hat and walk under a duck. I know she's beautiful. She's a riot, a seven-section callout, a thionite dream. So what? She is also Dessa Desplaines, formerly of Aldebaran II.

You love and worship power. Why? To any thinking mind it should be clear that such a lust intrinsically is, and forever must by its very nature be, futile. For, even if any one of you could command the entire material Universe, what good would it do him? None. What would he have? Nothing. Not even the satisfaction of accomplishment, for that lust is in fact insatiable — it would then turn upon itself and feed upon itself.

They did not ask him why he wanted that data. They may have wondered at his temerity in daring to scout alone a fortress whose strength had kept at bay the massed Patrol forces of the sector, but if they did so they kept their thoughts well screened. For this was a Gray Lensman, and very evidently a super–powered individual, even of that select group whose weakest members were powerful indeed.

First, there is nothing either intrinsically right or intrinsically wrong about liberty or slavery, democracy or autocracy, freedom of action or complete regimentation. It seems to us, however, that the greatest measure of happiness and of well-being for the greatest number of entities, and therefore the optimum advancement toward whatever sublime Goal it is toward which this cycle of existence is trending in the vast and unknowable Scheme of Things, is to be obtained by securing for each and every individual the greatest amount of mental and physical freedom compatible with the public welfare.

Why axes? Why not Lewistons, or rifles, or pistols? Because the space armor of that day could withstand almost indefinitely the output of two or three hand-held projectors; because the resistance of its defensive fields varied directly as the cube of the velocity of any material projectile encountering them. Thus, and strangely enough, the advance of science had forced the re-adoption of that long-extinct weapon.

There has always been, and will always be, the problem of surviving the experience that any trained expert can handle ... when there hasn't been any first survivor to become an expert.

Working hypotheses, young man, must be based upon accurately determined facts; not upon mere guesses, superstitions, or figments of personal prejudices.