H. Beam Piper famous quotes

03-28-2025

English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Angle bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.
-- H. Beam Piper

#Warrior #Trying #Bars
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

#Hands #Giving #Trying
English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results.
-- H. Beam Piper

#Men #Arms #Barmaids
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

#Texas #Excess #Killing
I had a lot of other ideas, now and then, but every time I took a second look at one, it got sick and died.
-- H. Beam Piper

#Ideas #Sick #Looks
Vengeance is a strange human motivation --- it can drive a man to do things which he neither would nor could achieve without it ... and because of that it lies behind some of the greatest sagas of human literature!
-- H. Beam Piper

#Motivation #Lying #Men
Sanity, it would seem, was a dangerously contagious disease.
-- H. Beam Piper

#Disease #Sanity #Contagious
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

#Prayer #Waiting #Apathy
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

#Two #Alcohol #Together
I like it where it gets dark at night, and if you want noise, you have to make it yourself.
-- H. Beam Piper

#Dark #Night #Want
Keep a goverment poor and weak and it's your servant; when it is rich and powerful it becomes your master.
-- H. Beam Piper

#Powerful #Rich #Poor

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