Quotes of Note: H. Beam Piper, "Little Fuzzy" III

Quotes of note from Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper:

(Page numbers gleaned from the 1983 eighth printing of the Ace mass-market paperback.)

"You never get anywhere by arguing religion with a priest." (p. 95) 

"You [don't] have to believe a thing to prove it. It helps, but it isn't necessary." (p. 96)

"People who have been charged with crimes ought to have public vindication if they are innocent." (p. 117) 

"In colonial law, you can find a precedent for almost anything." (p. 118)

"[O]nly one-tenth, never more than one-eighth, of our mental activity occurs above the level of consciousness." (p. 123) 

"[N]onsapient beings think, but only subconsciously... ." (p. 123) 

"[I]f you're innocent you're better off before a court-martial and if you're guilty you're better off in a civil court." (p. 149) 

"[O]nly the sapient mind thinks and knows that it is thinking." (p. 159) 

"The nonsapient animal is conscious only of what is immediately present to the senses and responds automatically." (p. 159) 

"The sapient mind ... is conscious of thinking about these sense stimuli, and makes descriptive statements about them, and then make statements about those statements, in a connected chain." (p. 159) 

"[T]he sapient mind can generalize. To the nonsapient animal, every experience is either totally novel or identical with some remembered experience." (p. 159) 

"The sapient being can conceive of something which has no existence whatever in the sense-available world of reality, and then he can work in plan toward making it a part of reality. He can not only imagine, but he can also create." (p. 168)