L Neil Smith Quotes

...occasionally I like carrying raw steel to remind myself of an important lesson. The blade's an extension of the hand, the agent--no pun intended--of my will. Most people understand this immediately of edged weapons... The trick--and few are subtle or sophisticated enough to master it--is to see that this is equally true... by implication, of all machines.

- ... It causeth unease. - Oh it doth, doth it?

Nine tenths of everything is tax. Everything you buy has a complicated history of robbery: land, raw materials, energy, tools, buildings, transport, storage, sales, profits. Don’t forget the share you contribute toward the personal income tax of every worker who has anything to do with the process. Inflation by taxation: there are a hundred taxes on a loaf of bread. What kind of living standard would we enjoy if everything cost a tenth of what it does? What kind of world? Think of your home, your car, your TV, your shoes, your supper—all at a 90% discount! Government can’t fight poverty—poverty is its proudest achievement!

the hunter’s tools are deadly weapons, capable not only of feeding him and his family, but of defending his life, liberty, and property against predators and thieves—including tax collectors. Requiring more subtlety and dexterity than raw power, they can be wielded to good effect by women, or even children.

The Prophet Joseph Smith warned us to ‘beware of self-righteousness’ and to enlarge our hearts toward all men and women until we feel ‘to take them upon our shoulders.

There exists no ”invisible hand“—that was always an unfortunate turn of phrase—but billions of highly visible fingers, doing, purely for personal gain, what others will freely barter for, with the sole object of improving their lives and those of their children.

Unless, as human beings, we come not only to accept but to openly rejoice in our fundamental and inescapable nature as predators, we condemn ourselves, as individuals and as a species, to unhappy, unnecessarily guilt-haunted lives. If we don’t allow ourselves to prey on other creatures, as is our nature, we’ll prey on ourselves and each other as we have throughout most of our agricultural history. Perhaps worse, soaked with guilt, however undeserved, we’ll continue handing our lives and minds over to any charlatan, however absurd, who offers us expiation, however false, for our sins, however imaginary.

The life of a gambler was somewhat checkered.

That’s true. On the other hand, everybody has to start again, fresh every day, from wherever they are.

the Nazis burned books in public. Liberals suppress opinions that differ from their own through influences they want kept secret. The right wing destroyed books. The left destroys authors. —William Wilde Curringer, Unfinished Memoirs

In a sense, the Republicans and Democrats had been professional athletic teams, striving mightily to defeat each other for the money, the spectacle, for victory itself, but for nothing else. They might even exchange members, who would be expected to play as hard for their new team as they had for their old.

I always cringe when I hear people say something like “I know such-and-such through science or reason, but the rest I’ll have to take on faith.” This statement suggests that faith is not about evidence—after all of the evidence is gathered and found wanting, then a person turns reluctantly to something called “faith” to patch the holes. Elder Neil L. Andersen explained that faith “is not something ethereal, floating loosely in the air.” Instead, our scriptures teach “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1; emphasis added). Joseph Smith changed the word “substance” to “assurance” in his inspired translation, and the underlying Greek word, hypostasis, may also be translated as “confidence.” “Assurance comes in ways that aren’t always easy to analyze,” Sharon Eubank observed, “but there is light in our darkness.” Thus, faith is not the absence of certitude, positive thinking, or a weak foundation of flimsy evidence. To have faith, Alma taught, means to “hope for things which are not seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21). Anne C. Pingree described it as a “spiritual ability to be persuaded of promises that are seen ‘afar off.’”6 Faith develops through our relationship with God our Father, by His communications with us through the Holy Ghost. Faith is a type of evidence that can be strengthened by observations, reports, and inferences, but it also exists independent of them.

With reflexes that were more like precognition, Han threw everything he had into an equally frantic bank.

I do not know, my friend. It seems wrong somehow that the success of a race be measured by its ability to do violence.

How was it that someone who loved life could be unafraid to die?

Nor did that intelligence provide him with an answer to his real problem. He knew submorons, many of them working for him, whose capacity to enjoy life was infinite compared to his.

The trouble with two partners having separate sets of mortal enemies is that said enemies don’t always make distinctions.

he didn’t care who ran the universe—he’d break whatever rules it suited him to disobey in any case, whoever was in charge—

the surest way to lie to others is to lie to oneself first. If you can convince the single soul who knows the falsehood for what it is, then everyone else is an easy mark.

Have you no respect?” Lando stopped, gave the robot a sober look. “Not a grain of it—not when it’s being imposed on me by the architecture.

Just who in the Hall are you, anyway?” Vuffi Raa said. Lando looked at the robot sharply. He hated having his good lines stolen.

People who object to weapons aren’t abolishing violence, they’re begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically ‘right.’ Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.” ~ L. Neil Smith

Flexible armor is for bullets and energy beams. It’s no protection at all against an unarmed man.

he limbered up, swung the guns up and down, side to side. The chair followed with them, giving him an exhilarating ride that was probably the real reason he liked the weapon so much.