H. Beam Piper Quotes (11 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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A Planet for Texans

H. Beam Piper

H. Beam Piper: 11 quotes1 like

Famous H. Beam Piper Quotes

“You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol - or he'll try to eat the one you gave him!”

H. Beam Piper

A Slave is a Slave (1962)

“I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.”

H. Beam Piper

Source: Fuzzies and Other People

“English is the product of a Norman warrior trying to make a date with an Anglo-saxon bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.”

H. Beam Piper

Source: Fuzzy Sapiens (1964)

“Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around.”

H. Beam Piper book Little Fuzzy

Source: Little Fuzzy

“Young man, the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when someone says something you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What DO you mean Lord Trask?”

H. Beam Piper

Captain Otto Harkaman in Space Viking (1962-1963)

“There's something wrong with democracy. If there weren't, it couldn't be overthrown by people like Makann, attacking it from within by democratic procedures. I don't think it's fundamentally unworkable. I think it just has a few of what engineers call bugs. It's not safe to run a defective machine till you learn the defects and remedy them.”

H. Beam Piper

Prince Simon Bentrik in Space Viking (1962-1963)

H. Beam Piper Quotes

“Everything has to be at once for six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age.”

H. Beam Piper

A Slave is a Slave (1962)
Context: Oh, he won't think of it in those terms. He'll be preventing me from sabotaging the Emancipation. He doesn't want to wait three generations; he wants to free them at once. Everything has to be at once for six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age.

“Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.”

H. Beam Piper

A Slave is a Slave (1962)
Context: Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

“Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.”

H. Beam Piper book A Planet for Texans

Lone Star Planet (1958)

“…the other three were of a breed Verkan Vall had learned to recognize on any time-line--the arrogant, cocksure, ambitious, leftist politician, who knows what is best for everybody better than anybody else does, and who is convinced that he is inescapably right and that whoever differs with him is not only an ignoramus but a venal scoundrel as well.”

H. Beam Piper

Verkan Vall in Last Enemy (1950)

“Keep a goverment poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master.”

H. Beam Piper

Colonel Andrew Jackson Hickock in Lone Star Planet (1958)