Quotes from The Ganymede Takeover (with Ray Nelson) ( 1967 )

"Any man can have freedom if he's willing to die for it." "You mean kill for it…"

"You're the leader of a major political movement; how can you expect anybody to respect you or what you stand for if you always act like a goddam clown?"

"If you act like dirt, people will treat you like dirt."

How do you not think something? Just the effort of trying not to think it brings it more strongly into your mind!

"Our operation," Marshal Koli continued, "is, as you know called Operation Cat Droppings - a Terran idiom connected with some unpleasant task."

"Inform your subordinates…that if this long-preapred for coup fails, they will all be smunged. Do you comprehend, all of you who repose in soft felt-lined niches, what it means to be smunged?"

Plainly it was one thing to read a mind and another to understand it…

"How…do they arrive at dates here?" "It is based on the birth of Jesus Christ, the Sole Begotten Son of God." "The way you talk…one would think you'd gone native. Do you believe in this God business?"

"The artful use of traitors is the secret of bloodless conquest…"

It's always easier and more impressive to tear things down rather than to build them up or even to sustain them. A human being takes a long time to grow, to mature, but it only takes a moment to damage and destroy him.

Joan Hiashi had returned to normality, if by normality one meant this leafless world in which humans normally live.

"Don't be fooled by the fact that he takes drugs; if you saw yourself the way you really are, as he sees himself, you'd need drugs, too, to stand it."

"There's no such thing as a weapon that's too powerful."

"I don't want to look in the future…Looking at the future is what makes me sick."

The world is a picture and if I wanted to change it, all I would need to do is imagine it to be different.

Everybody says 'we' these days…Nobody says 'I'. Everyone represents some formless, irresponsible group and nobody represents themselves.

How much he had learned from TV commercials!