"One nice thing about working with a piece of machinery: you don’t waste time trying to justify your actions."

Keith Laumer Literature See all quotes by Keith Laumer →

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“Rules had been made, and even enforced from time to time. When the first absolute prohibition of time meddling came along, it was already far too late.”

“An idea was beginning to get through, and he wasn’t liking it very well.”

“Yours is not to reason why, eh? I guess you’re lucky at that. It’s not dying that hurts—it’s living.”

“The Karg looked at her with the interested expression of a coroner who sees his customer twitch.”

“It was a nasty little village, poverty-stricken, ugly, hostile, much like little towns in all times and climes.”

“Too late, I realized how I had trapped myself. I had let sleep in as a guest, and death had slipped through the door.”

Resonant Thoughts

"'And make up your mind about what bloody race you belong to. One minute it’s all about being a farmer’s boy in Northamptonshire and the next you’re on about the old days in Calcutta and what the Briti…"

— Anthony Burgess

Music1917–1993

#philosophy

"It was like meeting an old friend, or better still, a mother after a long separation. His gentle face put me at ease in a moment. His minute inquiries about myself and my doings in South Africa at onc…"

— Gopal Krishna Gokhale

Literature1866–1915

#love

"We use power, of course, in the international fields in a way which is the exact contrary to the way in which we use it within the state. In the international field, force is the instrument of the riv…"

— Norman Angell

Economics1872–1967

#justice

"Now and then, an extraordinary case may turn up, but constitutional law, like other mortal contrivances, has to take some chances, and in the great majority of instances, no doubt, justice will be don…"

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Law1841–1935

#justice