Wasp Quotes

It's your right to refuse to believe. That's freedom, isn't it?
"Up to a point. A man has duties. He's no right to refuse those."
"No?" She raised tantalizing eyebrows, delicately curved. "Who defines those duties—himself, or somebody else?"
"His superiors, most times."
"No man is superior to another. No man has the right to define another man's duties." She paused, eyeing him speculatively. "If anyone on Terra exercises such idiotic power, it is only because idiots permit him. They fear freedom. They prefer to be told. They like being ordered around. What men!"

Given brawn and brains and enough time there’s always a way in or out. Escapees shot down as they bolted had chosen the wrong time and wrong place, or the right time and wrong place, or the right place at the wrong time. Or they’d neglected brawn in favor of brains, a common fault of the impatient. Or they’d neglected brains in favor of brawn, a fault of the reckless.

The World Council," Railton snorted. "All they're interested in is exploration, discovery and trade. All they can think of is culture and cash. They're completely devoid of any sense of peril."
"Not being military officers," Ashmore pointed out, "they can hardly be expected to exist in a state of perpetual apprehension.

Whenever Man was unable to master his invoice with this bare hands, thought Leeming, the said environment got bullied or coerced into submission by Man plus X. That had been so from the beginning of time—Man plus a tool or a weapon.
But X did not have to be anything concrete or solid, it did not have to be lethal or even visible. It could be a dream, an idea, an illusion, a bloody big thundering lie, just anything.
There was only one true test—whether it worked.

From what I have heard, from all that I have been told, I deduce a basic rule applying to lifeforms deemed intelligent."…
"And what is this rule?"
"That the governing body of any lifeforms such as ours will be composed of power-lovers rather than of specialists."
"Well, isn't it?"
"Unfortunately, it is. Government falls into the hands of those who desire authority and escapes those with other interests." He paused, went on. "That is not to say that those who govern us are stupid. They are quite clever in their own particular field of mass-organization. But by the same token they are pathetically ignorant of other fields.

Inside their military minds conditioning masqueraded as logic.

Obviously riled, he growled at Lawson, “The right to unobstructed passage covers our vessels as much as anyone else’s.”
“It covers no warship bearing instructions to intercept, question, search or detain any other spaceship it considers suspicious,” declared the other. “Violators of the law are not entitled to claim protection of the law.”
“Can you tell me how to conduct a war between systems without sending armed ships through space?” asked Markhamwit, bitterly sarcastic.
Lawson waved an indifferent hand. “We aren’t the least bit interested in that problem. It is your own worry.”
“It cannot be done,” Markhamwit shouted.
“That’s most unfortunate,” remarked Lawson, full of false sympathy. “It creates an awful state of no-war.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“Is peace funny?”
“War is a serious matter,” bawled Markhamwit, striving to retain a grip on his temper. “It cannot be ended with a mere flick of the finger.”
“The fact should be borne in mind by those who so nonchalantly start them,” advised Lawson, quite unmoved by the Great Lord’s ire.
“The Nileans started it.”
“They say that you did.”
“They are incorrigible liars.”
“That’s their opinion of you, too.”
A menacing expression on his face, Markhamwit said, “Do you believe them?”
“We never believe opinions.”
“You are evading my question. Somebody has to be a liar. Who do you think it is?”
“We haven’t looked into the root-causes of your dispute. It is not our woe. So without any data to go upon we can only hazard a guess.”
“Go ahead and do some hazarding then,” Markhamwit invited. He licked expectant lips.
“Probably both sides have little regard for the truth,” opined Lawson, undeterred by the other’s attitude. “It is the usual setup. When war breaks out the unmitigated liar comes into his own. His heyday lasts for the duration. After that, the victorious liars hang the vanquished ones.”

The stuff was about twelve gauge and near enough for his purpose. It resembled deep-colored copper but was not as soft as copper nor as heavy. Hard, springy and light, like telephone wire. If there were at least a thousand yards of it below, and if he could manage to drag it up to the ship, and if the golden thing didn’t come along and ball up the works, he might be able to blow free. Then he’d get to some place civilized—if he could find it. The future was based on an appalling selection of “ifs.”

The role of peacemaker appeals to those with any claim to be civilized.

By the standards of the dim past they were appallingly ugly; but by the standards of her especial planet and her especial era they were not ugly. They were merely an individualistic aspect of the same universal thing which is named Intelligence.

What's the matter with you? Got a bellyache or something?
"No, sir. I've been thinking."
"Does it hurt that much?"

Markham was going to hand him a tough one. That was Markham’s job: to rake through a mess of laconic, garbled, distorted or eccentric reports, pick out the obvious problems and dump them squarely in the laps of whoever happened to be hanging around and was considered suitable to solve them. One thing could be said in favor of this technique: its victims often were bothered, bedeviled or busted, but at least they were never bored. The problems were not commonplace, the solutions sometimes fantastic.

After all, somebody has to do the paperwork."
"I'd agree if the paperwork was necessary and made sense."
"If there wasn't any paperwork, we'd both be out of a job."
"You've got something there. So on this planet there are two thousands of us sitting on our fundaments busily making work for each other.

The reaction showed that the audience had never encountered this argument before or concocted anything like it of their own accord. None were stupid enough to accept it as serious assertion of fact. All were sufficiently intelligent to recognize it as logical or pseudo-logical denial of something self-evident and demonstrably true.

Nobody knew better than the Solarians that wars are not caused , declared or willingly fought by nations, planetary peoples or shape-groups, for these consist in the main of plain, ordinary folk who crave nothing more than to be left alone. The real culprits are power-drunken cliques of near-maniacs who by dint of one means or another have coerced the rest.