“It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.”

Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody

The laws of nature are only as immutable as the minds which promote them. Ignorance of the law is 9/10ths of the law. Just because you aren’t paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

You’re an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I’m an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I’m in an ideal position to appreciate it.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.

They agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.

Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

The question is: what is a sane man to do in an insane society?

Be glad you’re even alive. Be furious you’re going to die.

I’ve only had four ideas for a novel in my life, and I’ve written all of them.

I think in every country that there is at least one executive who is scared of going crazy.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

There was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to.

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it’s going your way. When it isn’t, don’t call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

When you stop doing things for fun you might as well be dead.

There is no such thing as ‘too insane’ unless others turn up dead due to your actions.

Anything dead coming back to life hurts.

I like a man who’s good, but not too good – for the good die young, and I hate a dead one.

When goals go, meaning goes. When meaning goes, purpose goes. When purpose goes, life goes dead on our hands.