“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
“My books already threatened to take over my part of the room and keep on going . . . whatever cargoes of words I could lay my hands on I gave safe harbor.”
― Ivan Doig, quote from The Whistling Season
“Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, quote from How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
“Sixty three sunsets I saw revolve on that perpendicular hill – mad raging sunsets pouring in sea foams of cloud through unimaginable crags like the crags you grayly drew in pencil as a child, with every rose-tint of hope beyond, making you feel just like them, brilliant and bleak beyond words. –”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from Lonesome Traveler
“Was it all inevitable, John?" Reeve was pushing his fingers across the floor of the cell, seated on his haunches. I was lying on the mattress.
Yes," I said. "I think it was. Certainly, it's written that way. The end of the book is there before the beginning's hardly started.”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“Deborah was the only person on earth who knew what I really was, and even though she was still getting used to the idea, I had thought she understood the very careful boundaries set up by Harry, and understood, too, that I would never cross them.”
― Jeff Lindsay, quote from Dexter in the Dark
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.