Louis L'Amour Quotes

No. Until man can order his own affairs, until he ceases to prey on his brothers, he will need someone to maintain order. A lawman is not a restraint, but a freedom, a liberation. He restrains only those who would break the laws and provides freedom for the rest of us to work, to laugh, to sing, to play in peace.

This is a story of an adventure in education, pursued not under the best of conditions.

Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by archeologists of the future. Surely, the citizens and the rulers of Babylon and Rome did not see themselves as a passing phase. Each in its time believed it was the end-all of the world’s progression. I have no such feeling. Each age is a day that is dying, each one a dream that is fading. Someday, men — or some other intelligent creatures — will stand on the sites of New York or Los Angeles and wonder if anyone ever lived there.

A name is what a man makes it,” I

...be wary of evidence given by others, for in all evidence there is some interpretation. The eyes see, the mind explains. But does the mind explain correctly? The mind only has what experience and education have given it, and perhaps that is not enough. Because one has seen does not mean one knows.

All men wish to be captains, but few men wish to shoulder the burden of decision, and in coming here with these others, I had staked a claim that I must wall against misfortune.

I was by no means a scholar, simply an interested reader with nothing to do but live and learn.

I’ve written all these stories without any pornography, without any obscenity. I grew up among sailors and miners and lumberjacks and the roughest kind men in the world, but I never found it necessary to use all that in the stories. I can make them real without that. I think much of that kind of writing is a coverup for lack of real skill.

he who ceases to learn is already a half-dead man.

Folks can’t seem to realize that it isn’t a smooth talker we need in there but a steady man, a man with judgement. Any medicine-show man can spout words, if they are written for him. It takes no genius to sound well. To act right and at the right time is something else again.

Only, the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a crime. If a man is going to vote, if he’s going to take part in his country and its government, then it’s up to him to understand.

A man ought to know enough to make a choice; and pa, he always advised me to look to both sides of a proposition.

You believe in heroes?” Corvino looked at him thoughtfully. “I cannot believe in anything else. A man needs heroes. He needs to believe in strength, nobility and courage. Otherwise we become sheep to be herded to the slaughterhouse of death. I believe this. I am a soldier. I try to fight for the right cause. Sometimes it is hard to know.

I've a regard for law, although I do not always agree with it. Without law, man becomes a beast.

The more one learns the more he understands his ignorance. I am simply an ignorant man, trying to lessen his ignorance.