“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
“I like to know what I'm celebrating before I put on a party hat.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Into the Gauntlet
“It is better not to try people, not to force them to desperation. Make them prosper; out of superfluidity, they will be generous. Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.”
― Hilary Mantel, quote from Bring Up the Bodies
“Change had come over him without his knowing. There had been no precise point at which the city had lost its romance and promise, no point at which he had begun to consider himself old, his career closed, and his visions of the future became only visions of Anand's future. Each realization had been delayed and had come, not as a surprise, but as a statement of a condition long accepted.”
― V.S. Naipaul, quote from A House for Mr Biswas
“Well! what is there remarkable in all this? Why have I recorded it? Because, reader, it was important enough to give me a cheerful evening, a night of pleasing dreams, and a morning of felicitous hopes. Shallow-brained cheerfulness, foolish dreams, unfounded hopes, you would say; and I will not venture to deny it: suspicions to that effect arose too frequently in my own mind. But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes; then, they instantly ignite, and the flame of hope is kindled in a moment.”
― Anne Brontë, quote from Agnes Grey
“During the day, memories could be held at bay, but at night, dreams became the devil's own accomplices.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from The Reckoning
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.