"He had seen Hyle shoot, and he had seen only one man he thought was as good ... just one. He'd seen Con Vallian down in the Bald Knob country that time, and Con was quick. He was almighty quick at a time when a man was either quick or he was dead."

“A knife is sharpened on stone, steel is tempered by fire, but men must be sharpened by men.”

“Many people know how to get money, but few know how to keep it. Wise investments are always based on information, Johannes, so the more you know, the better.”

“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.”

“Out here you better have a gun, and a gun in the wagon ain't good for nothin'. I believe what the old Quaker said,"Trust in the Lord, but keep your powder dry.”

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.”

“How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them? What was the point at which acceptance would begin to yield to doubt? For the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all. Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different. Authority, in this world in which I moved, implied belief in and acceptance of a dogma, and dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition. The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside.  Each generation has a group that wishes to impose a static pattern on events, a static pattern that would hold society forever immobile in a position favorable to the group in question.”