Quotes from H. Beam Piper

Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers.

Then the Yo-Yo was coming around again, and Vann Larch was saying, "Gehenna with this fooling around! I'll fix the expurgated unprintability!

We don't let dogs snap at us. And when they do, we don't kick them, we shoot them!

Well, that was one thing you had to give [Makann] credit for. He wanted to run out the Gilgameshers. Everybody was in favor of that. Now, Trask could remember something he'd gotten from Harkaman. There had been Hitler, back at the end of the First Century Pre-Atomic; hadn't he gotten into power because everybody was in favor of running out the Christians, or the Moslems, or the Albigensians, or somebody?

Young Mr. Conn Maxwell, who has just returned from Terra, needs no introduction to any of you," he began. Then, having established that, he took the next ten minutes to introduce Conn.

I'm sorry, Prince Edvard. You had a wonderful civilization here on Marduk. You could have made almost anything of it. But it's too late now. You've torn down the gates; the barbarians are in.

If you want to make an omelet, you have to break eggs.

I wanted to find out why. But when Professor Dandrik saw what was happening, he became almost hysterical, and ordered the accelerator shut down as though he were afraid it would blow up in his face." "I think it has blown up in his face," Prince Travann said quietly.

Sometimes getting a job is harder than the job after you get it—and sometimes getting out of a job is harder than either!

NAUDSONCE Bishop Berkeley's famous question about the sound of a falling tree may have no standing in Science. But there is a highly interesting question about "sound" that Science needs to consider....

Every hour or so, he looked at his watch, and it would be three or four minutes later.

a man killed committing a felony--and bombing and arson ought to qualify for that--is simply bought and paid for; his blood is on nobody's head but his own.

If you don't like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts, dream up some you do like