“The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth—you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“If I’ve reached the place where I’m a good influence on anybody, it’s time I cultivated some new vices.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“She might get high enough to crash—no higher.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“This school is based on the idea that a man who can think correctly will automatically behave morally—or”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behavior and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalize original and imaginative thinking. Commodore Arkwright realized that these tendencies are inherent and inescapable; he hoped to offset them a bit by setting up a course that could not be passed without original thinking.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“Strictly speaking, the Patrol is not a military organization at all.” “Sir?” “I know, I know—you are trained to use weapons, you are under orders, you wear a uniform. But your purpose is not to fight, but to prevent fighting, by every possible means. The Patrol is not a fighting organization; it is the repository of weapons too dangerous to entrust to military men.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“Men on the surface of a planet are as helpless against men in spaceships as a man would be trying to conduct a rock-throwing fight from the bottom of a well. The man at the top of the well has gravity working for him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“They flew her,” Matt pointed out. “Sure they did—and my hat’s off to them. But it takes heroes to fly a box as primitive as this and I’m not the hero type.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Space Cadet
“It's the good minds that find difficulty in committing themselves”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“The baby regarded Mike gravely as she discoursed to it about a poor drowned woofum-wuffums, and did the bad man treat it badly, then. The baby belched eloquently.
“He belches in English!” I remarked.
“Did it have the windy ripples?” cooed Mike. “Give us a kiss, honey lamb.”
The baby immediately flung its little arms around her neck and planted a whopper on her mouth.
“Wow!” said Mike when she got her breath. “Shorty, could you take lessons!”
“Lessons my eye,” I said jealously. “Mike, that’s no baby, that’s some old guy in his second childhood.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume II: Microcosmic God
“We all know who you are, Mr. Coughlin. Famous Yankee gangster. Friend of the colonel. It would be safer for a man to swim into the middle of the ocean and cut his own throat than to threaten you.' He solemnly made the sign of the cross. 'But when people starve and have nowhere to go, where would you have them end up?'
'Not on my land,' Joe said.
'But it is not your land. It's God's. You are renting it. This rum? This life?' He patted his chest. 'We are all just renting from God.”
― Dennis Lehane, quote from Live by Night
“It was then that he started his novel The People Immortal, and when I read it later, many of its pages seemed to me very familiar. He found himself as a writer during the war. His pre-war books were nothing more than searching for his theme and language. He was a true internationalist and reproached me frequently for saying “Germans” instead of “Hitler’s men” when describing the atrocities of the occupiers.’ Ehrenburg was persuaded that it was Grossman’s all-embracing world view which made the xenophobic Stalin hate him.”
― Vasily Grossman, quote from A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army
“Prayer is the soul's sincere desire. Your desire is your prayer. It comes out of your deepest needs and it reveals the things you want in life.”
― Joseph Murphy, quote from THE POWER OF YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS MIND (Tamil)
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.