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1 " The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy. "
― Robert A. Heinlein , Space Cadet
2 " Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth—you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers. "
3 " If I’ve reached the place where I’m a good influence on anybody, it’s time I cultivated some new vices. "
4 " She might get high enough to crash—no higher. "
5 " A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behavior and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalize original and imaginative thinking. Commodore Arkwright realized that these tendencies are inherent and inescapable; he hoped to offset them a bit by setting up a course that could not be passed without original thinking. "
6 " This school is based on the idea that a man who can think correctly will automatically behave morally—or "
7 " Strictly speaking, the Patrol is not a military organization at all.” “Sir?” “I know, I know—you are trained to use weapons, you are under orders, you wear a uniform. But your purpose is not to fight, but to prevent fighting, by every possible means. The Patrol is not a fighting organization; it is the repository of weapons too dangerous to entrust to military men. "
8 " Men on the surface of a planet are as helpless against men in spaceships as a man would be trying to conduct a rock-throwing fight from the bottom of a well. The man at the top of the well has gravity working for him. "
9 " They flew her,” Matt pointed out. “Sure they did—and my hat’s off to them. But it takes heroes to fly a box as primitive as this and I’m not the hero type. "
