"He's very cute, Veronica, but isn't he a bit young? Sometimes I think you're a cradle-robber."

"Who, me? No way. Under six inches, I throw 'em back."

Re using trade restrictions to deal with Chinese human-rights violations: right verdict; wrong sentence.

Just because you can put more transistors on the chip, it doesn't mean you should add functions to the product.

Like most Americans, I believe school teachers are underpaid, considering what we expect them to accomplish; and grossly overpaid, considering what they actually do accomplish.

"I refuse to pay this invoice," said Tom unremittingly.

For every social problem there is a solution that is simple, cheap, effective, and guaranteed to cost votes.

Thomas Kuhn's model of scientific epistemology is, of course, currently the dominant paradigm. However, this does not mean it is leading us any closer to the truth.

A lottery is a tax on stupidity. "Think of it as evolution in action."

Try to marry someone you respect and love. If you marry someone you respect but do not love, you still have a chance for happiness. If you marry someone you neither respect nor love, you will live in misery, but it will be bearable. But there is nothing more disastrous to your happiness than to marry someone you love but do not respect.

A typical feminist, always on the prod, to whom women's having to sleep on the wet spot seemed the moral equivalent of the Holocaust.

He had an instinct for doing exactly the wrong thing in a crisis, like an armadillo on the highway.

True scholarship is worthy of respect. But it is very rare. Most "scholarship" is merely an activity of sorting and classifying intellectual coprolites.

The good news is, there are plenty of real men. The bad news is, we're already married--to the real women.

Libertarians fail to understand that government is the effect, not the cause; the symptom, not the disease.

Gimmick: Build a bug and recorder into a tape recorder. The victim thinks because the recorder is turned off, it's not recording. Purloined letter theme.

Gimmick: A celibate priesthood of men and women selected because of their bad genes.

Gimmick: A world in which technology is so advanced that private individuals of modest wealth can make nuclear weapons. (Probably suitable for a novel. Protagonist a government official charged with suppressing "terrorism"--government becomes increasingly repressive--repression results in more resistance--protagonist's organization becomes corrupted by power . . .)

Gimmick: Availability of contraception removes from the gene pool women who don't want children . . .

The way you tell good science from bad science is not by the results, but by the experiments. Classic example: Rhine's tests of psychokinesis with dice. If PK is real in these experiments, the forces applied must be on the order of milligrams. But much smaller forces can be measured on a simple lab balance. Why did Rhine not just have his subjects try to push down the pan with their minds? The fact that he did not run this experiment says more about ESP "science" than any statistical analysis of his results.

Accepting reality is not an alternative to improving it; it is a prerequisite.

Story theme: scientific integrity.

There are two ways to build suspense: (1) What the hell is going on? (2) What is he going to do next?

It's not possible to be more intelligent than the stock market. It is, however, possible to be less emotional than the market. That's how people get rich.

"Butter wouldn't melt between her thighs."

Re "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we--": Science has its limits. Science can make poor people rich; it can make sick people healthy; it can perhaps make stupid people smart. But not even science can make evil people good.

The objectivist epistemology can be reduced to two simple rules. Rule One: Reality makes sense. Rule Two: If something doesn't make sense, refer to Rule One.

World War II, like any war, was driven by many forces. But more than anything else, it was driven by racism; and the armies that fought, on both sides, were little more than lynch mobs with heavy weapons.

Stock-market "experts" commonly recommend "averaging down" as a method of buying stock. But this is just a martingale; like the famous roulette gambling systems, it is a method of increasing one's bets after a loss.

Preventing a war through strength is expensive; but not as expensive as fighting a war. Fighting a war and winning is expensive; but not as expensive as fighting and losing. Fighting and losing is expensive; but not as expensive as losing without a fight.

Stay away from any story about a writer, publisher, or editor, or film or play about an actor. A story which turns on a key character having amnesia is almost guaranteed to be a loser. Stories in which the protagonist goes insane are treacherous; note that even Shakespeare had to concede defeat when he brought Lear back from insanity to confront Cordelia's death.

Deep Menacing Voice: "The whip! The whip!"

Shrill Frightened Voice: "Oh, no! Not the whip!"

DMV: "The whip! The whip!"

SFV: "No, please! Not the whip!"

DMV: "The whip! The whip!"

SFV: "No, no, anything but the whip!"

DMV: ". . . Anything?"

SFV: "The whip! The whip!"

[a joke I heard long ago]

Essay: The difference between regulation and rule of law.

I am too egotistical to be jealous. The normal man says, "She prefers another man to me; there must be something wrong with me." But I would say: "She prefers another man to me; there must be something wrong with her."

Book: A Practical Guide to Propaganda.

For a person living in modern American society to seek out feminist writing would be like a fish looking for a drinking fountain.

Every prediction of disaster goes through three stages. In the first, it frightens people. In the second, it is dismissed as exaggerated. In the third, it comes true.

No man can see clearly with tears in his eyes. When the surgeon has scalpel in hand, let him not see me as a human being.

We often see alternative medicine dismissed because only anecdotal evidence is available; no formal scientific studies have been done. But these objections come from people who have done their utmost, and successfully, to prevent such studies from being financed or conducted. To use a legal term, they should be estopped from making such an argument.

Mystery series are a standard genre now. One thing that would be interesting and original would be to tell each story in the series from the POV of the client. The continuity of using the same detective would thus be retained, but each story would have a fresh viewpoint.

In every society there must be rules, and there must be exceptions to the rules. In the healthy society, exceptions are granted generously; but they are rigorously recognized as exceptions.

Power is obeyed because people know they will be worse off if they don't. Authority is obeyed because people know they will be better off if they do.

The philosopher of science likes to think of himself as a sort of Jane Goodall observing and analyzing lesser creatures. In fact, he is himself quite intellectually inferior to the people he is studying, and generally does not even comprehend what they are doing.

Economists--including libertarian economists--are academics, generally with zero acquaintance with business. What economist has ever met a payroll? Keynes at least was active in the market, but as a speculator; and it shows, for he had a speculator's view of the market--the emphasis on the short term, the talk about "animal spirits" and confidence. Economists, in short, are like virgins pontificating about the right way to have sex.

The difference between a "father figure" and a father is the difference between a crutch and a leg.

Every marriage encounters conflict between the spouses. One can distinguish the good marriage by the attitude of cheerful exasperation exhibited when partners clash.

Attacked by rabid lemmings, he defended himself with a belt-fed .22 LR . . .

For the woman who complained she couldn't find a real man, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is there are plenty of real men. The bad news is we're already married--to the real women.

In education, as in biology, there are r-strategists and K-strategists. The former want to get some minimal level of knowledge to as many students as possible. The latter are striving to produce excellence, even if this means limiting the student body.

Most people think of mathematics as a subject, like history or geography. The more educated perceive it as a language. But actually it is a sense, like sight or hearing.

Essay: "Does Philosophy Exist?" To discuss the despair of academic philosophy, and the Objectivist objective of making philosophy a science. Ref. Rand's essay.

"He's one doll short of a matryoshka."