Murray Leinster Quotes

Again time passed. In one of the remoter galaxies a supernova flamed, and on a rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed experimentally—and to mankind the one event was just as important as the other.

Hoddan fumbled for her meaning. It wasn’t quite an apology for trying to get him killed. But at least it was a disclaimer of future intentions in that direction.

Twilight remained, a fairy half-light in which all things looked much more charming than they really were.

His reasoning was emotional, and therefore simple.

“We’re fools!” said Harrison. “Morons! Idiots!”
“If you speak of my altruism,” said Pepe cheerfully, “I agree. But if you speak of your interest in a very pretty girl, then I point out that nobody is ever as happy as while he is making a fool of himself over a woman.

He was in a state of doubt which passed very well for modesty.

And, just as she had responded to primitive prowess, so Ron reacted to feminine admiration by an enormously increased urge to accomplish.

A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.

And this was no observation by a mere human, who might delude himself. This was a report from complex electronic devices. It was images formed on phosphors coated on radar screen tubes, excited by accelerated electrons whose pattern of impact was governed by echoes from the original of the image. Phosphors do not imagine. Electrons are not affected by panic. As a radar image it was a faithful report—in its own terms, without interpretation—of something that actually was.

From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss.

My specialty is the mechanics of research. But I test my theories about how to make discoveries by using them to make discoveries.

There are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn’t realize that there are people so stupid you can’t show them anything.

Her eyes upon him were soft. Civilized people act upon intellectualized motives. They decide what is wise, and sometimes do it. But when they are swayed by purest primitive instincts they are usually happier. Hana was responding to one of the most ancient of all known human impulses—admiration of a proved warrior.

It was totally unrealistic to think that because there had been wildly unlikely coincidences in the immediate past, that there would be more wildly unlikely ones turning up in orderly succession. Yet...

It couldn’t happen! Hoddan couldn’t conceive of such a thing. But a recently developed pessimism suggested that since everything else, to date, had been to his disadvantage, this was probably a catastrophe also.