“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”

“Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.”

“Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.”

“The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.”

“It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm...”

“It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country," he read. "This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.”

“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?”

“The world rides through space on the back of a turtle. This is one of the great ancient world myths, found wherever men and turtles were gathered together; the four elephants were an Indo-European ...”

“History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where t...”