Wasp Quotes

It pays to stop and think whenever you’ve got time to stop and think.

The stupid believe because they are credulous. The intelligent do not blindly accept but, when aware of their own ignorance, neither do they reject.

Fander tried to explain the alien in non-alien terms. It proved impossible.

Superior life does not establish itself by benefit of brains alone; manual dexterity is equally essential.

Science fiction, like any other genuine literary form, must evolve. It was easier in the old days — easier to find ideas, easier to stop in the middle of everything for a dissertation on Jupiter's moons. The modern way, starting a story in the middle of a future- or other-world environment and taking it from there is a challenge to the writer. It isn't always easy, but it is fun.

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.

He thinks he’s heap big. To me he’s just a big heap.

The first rule of captaincy is to consider the men before considering an exterior problem. There is no real solution to any predicament unless there is also the means to apply it.

After this, doors had to be opened with all the caution of a tax collector coping with a mysterious parcel that ticks.

Anyway, one soon loses appreciation of the value of something gained for nothing, one becomes bored by getting it for the mere asking."
"I don't," assured Zalumar. "I like it, I love it."
"Every day I see windows full of gold watches," said Lakin. "They tire me. I have a gold watch which I obtained by demanding it. I don't want fifty gold watches. I don't even want two of them. So what use are all the others to me?

When one is fighting a paper-war one uses paper-war tactics that in the long run can be just as lethal as high explosive. And the tactics are not limited in scope by use of one material. The said material is very variable in form. Paper can convey a private warning, a public threat, secret temptation, open defiance; wall-bills, window-stickers, leaflets dropped by the thousands from the roof-tops, cards left on seats or slipped into pockets and purses... money.

As for the causes, he listened to them with boredom. Only the strong know there is but one cause of war. All the other multitudinous reasons recorded in the history books were not real reasons at all. They were nothing but plausible pretexts. There was but one root-cause that persisted right back to the dim days of the jungle. When two monkeys want the same banana, that is war.

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.

Listen to me. You were born in Masham, capital city of Diracta – the Sirian home planet. Your father was a trader there at the time. You lived on Diracta until the age of seventeen, when you returned with your parents to Terra.

He made it either by sheer good luck or, more likely, happy absence of bad luck.