Author: James Wesley Rawles

“Is that one of those new hundreds? You know, where they changed the picture of Ben Franklin? Look at him, yeah. He looks like the love child of-of, uh, Fred Mertz and Rosie O’Donnell! Yeah, that’s him, yeah. Get rid of it as soon as you can, lady. Look at it up in the light. You see that metal strip? That’s a tracking device!” – Mel Gibson as Jerry Fletcher, in Conspiracy Theory. (Screenplay by Brian Helgeland.)

“I’m only paranoid because they want me dead.” – Mel Gibson as Jerry Fletcher, in Conspiracy Theory. (Screenplay by Brian Helgeland.)

“You really don’t understand. We don’t worry about individuals. What counts is that many millions of people have the knowledge that they can go to a weapon shop if they want to protect themselves and their families. And, even more important, the forces that would normally try to enslave them are restrained by the conviction that it is dangerous to press people too far. And so a great balance has been struck between those who govern and those who are governed.” – A.E. Van Vogt, The Weapons Shops of Isher

“For every serious attempt to achieve integration of house to site you will find a thousand houses peppering the landscape and clearly demonstrating the builder’s total disregard for even the most basic considerations of sun, wind, and view.” – Ken Kern, The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

“In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.” – Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

“Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.” – Jerry Pournelle, in a reply to a reader’s e-mail in Chaos Manor Mail #141, February 19-25, 2001

“A man and his tools make a man and his trade.” Vita Sackville-West, A Saxon Song, in The Independent Vol. 110 (1923); also in Collected Poems (1934)

“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” – Zig Ziglar as quoted in Trigger Events – How To Find Your Next Customer (2007) by Alen Majer

“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books. For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the flicking of a finger.” – Gordon Dickson, Tactics of Mistake

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” – William Goldman, in The Princess Bride (1973) and the film The Princess Bride (1987)

“Knowledge isn’t restrained by the limits of Malthus. Information doesn’t need topsoil to grow in, only freedom. Given eager minds and experimentation, it feeds itself like a chain react.” – David Brin, Earth