“A community where everyone is a ruthless murderer, with handy access to death-dealing devices, is a very polite community.”

“Jill: 'I don't pay attention to politics.'Ben: 'You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat.'Jill: 'I don't pay attention to that, either.”

“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”

“There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured...the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked to him with a stick. If you disturb the patient at such time, he may break into tears or become violent.”

“Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.”

“The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.”

“An armed society is a polite society.”