Jerry Pournelle Quotes

We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity. I am afraid. I will taste fear until I die.

~ Jerry Pournelle

Mr. Prince, would you like to know the most significant event in the history of freedom?The American Revolution?A defensible choice, a close second even, but not mine. I would choose the moment when the Roman plebians required the patricians to write down the twelve tables of the law and put them where everyone could see them -- thereby proclaimed the law supreme over the politicians. The rule of law is the essence of freedom.

~ Jerry Pournelle

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

We're basically after Joe's beer money, and Joe likes his beer, so you better make sure that what you give him is at least as pleasurable to him as having his six-pack of beer would be.

~ Jerry Pournelle