Jerry Pournelle Quotes

Quotes about:

Age Politics War Writing

To stand on the firing parapet and expose yourself to danger; to stand and fight a thousand miles from home when you're all alone and outnumbered and probably beaten; to spit on your hands and lower the pike; to stand fast over the body of Leonidas the King; to be rear guard at Kunu-Ri; to stand and be still to the Birkenhead Drill; these are not rational acts. They are often merely necessary.

Jerry Pournelle

Kings, Home, Fighting

"There Will Be War". Book by Jerry Pournelle, 1983.

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Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Jerry Pournelle

Men, Equal, Free Man

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Bureaucracies are progressive. meaning they have a burning fear that someone. somewhere, is doing something without permission.

Jerry Pournelle

Burning, Investing, Progressive

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A Dark Age is not just a period in which people no longer know how to do things. The real key is that people no longer remember that certain things can be done at all.

Jerry Pournelle

Real, Dark, Keys

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In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

Jerry Pournelle

Teacher, Children, Writing

"The View From Chaos Manor". Jerry Pournelle's blog, www.jerrypournelle.com. April 3, 2006.

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That which does not kill me, has made a grave tactical error.

Jerry Pournelle

Errors, Doe, Made

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In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.[Pournelle's law of Bureaucracy]

Jerry Pournelle

Law, People, Goal

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One of the things we must be able to agree to is to lose an election and not take to the streets.

Jerry Pournelle

Able, Election, Streets

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A smart soldier wants to know the causes of wars. Also how to end them. After all, war is the normal state of affairs, isn't it? Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars.

Jerry Pournelle

War, Smart, Names

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We have for years been building a society in which everybody plunders everybody, and while we are weary of being plundered, we enjoy the plunder.

Jerry Pournelle

Years, Building, Plunder

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Freedom is not free. It is bought at a high price. It can be squandered cheaply.

Jerry Pournelle

High Prices

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In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action.

Jerry Pournelle

Want, Action, Ethical

"Lucifer's Hammer". Book by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, 1977.

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The difference between Libertarian and Conservative is that Conservatives understand this, and know that unregulated capitalism will eventually end with human meat sold in market places, and slavery. Alas, many Conservatives think that everything has to be regulated and controlled.

Jerry Pournelle

Thinking, Differences, Political

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Much of economics isn't difficult, or rather, the difficulty is in cooking up arguments to "prove" that commonsense conclusions are wrong. The fact is that many commonsense conclusions are quite correct, and it takes a lot of education to get you to believe different.

Jerry Pournelle

Believe, Cooking, Different

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The arrogance of some of those who are so damned sure they are right is just astounding. Scientific witch hunts are often the worst kind, and have been since the secular authorities stopped enforcing the local bishop's decrees of anathema.

Jerry Pournelle

Math, Science, Arrogance

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I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.

Jerry Pournelle

Writing, Mean, Stories

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Gates has always understood Moore's Law better than anyone else in the industry. If you can make something run at all, get it out there -it may be slow and clunky, but hardware improvements will bail you out. If you wait until it's running perfectly on the hardware already in the field, it will be obsolete before it's released. This philosophy built Microsoft and is the main reason Microsoft won the war IBM declared back in the OS/2 days.

Jerry Pournelle

Running, Philosophy, War

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Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.

Jerry Pournelle

Warrior, Cities, People

Reply to reader email on "The View from Chaos Manor" - personal blog, www.jerrypournelle.com. February 21, 2001.

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If you submit a search of the following phrase on Google, you get over four hundred returns, and they are often very strange ones: "I have more information in one place than anybody in the world."

Jerry Pournelle

World, Information

The View From Chaos Manor, View 402, www.jerrypournelle.com. February 20 - 26, 2006.

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It's the nature of government, to build enduring institutions, structures that stay long after their purpose is over. If you pay people to help the poor, you have people who won't be paid if there aren't any poor, so they'll be sure to find some.

Jerry Pournelle

Government, Long, People

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I have a big collection of quotation programs...In particular, I like MCR Software's Wisdom of the Ages, which has the best selection of relevant quotes I know.

Jerry Pournelle

Age, Mcr, Program

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Unrestricted laissez faire capitalism allocates resources in a most efficient way to satisfy human wants without regard to the rationality or morality of those desires.

Jerry Pournelle

Political, Desire, Laissez Faire Capitalism

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You no longer have much in the way of knowing what to do in a big, epic novel about the future, because nobody knows what the hell is going to happen.

Jerry Pournelle

Epic, Knowing, Way

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Paradoxically, the few eras of peace were times when men of war had high influence. The Pax Romana was enforced by Caesar's Legions. The Pax Brittanica was enforced by the Royal Navy and His Majesty's Forces.

Jerry Pournelle

Peace, War, Men

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Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, works only as long as it works; it does not know what to do if deterrence fails, for it envisions no defensive capabilities. A deterrent works until it is needed; then one needs defenses.

Jerry Pournelle

Peace, War, Long

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Jerry Pournelle

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Born: August 7, 1933
Occupation: Fiction writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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