Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded Quotes

“If you want me to treat your ideas with more respect, get some better ideas.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“I failed angst in high school. They let me graduate anyway.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“I'll say it: I want to see an ugly woman as a spokeswoman for a women's network. Ugly men are out there all the time – look at Larry King, for God's sake. He looks like someone's talking underwear. Why not give America a spokeswoman who ain't much to look at but is competent as Hell? If accomplishments actually count for women, this ought to be a no-brainer.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“The Scooby gang doesn’t travel because they are looking for crimes to solve. They travel because they’re one step ahead of the deprogrammers. Somehow, Fred’s got them all snookered. It probably has something to do with the Scooby Snacks.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“Libertarians: Never got over the fact they weren’t the illegitimate children of Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand; currently punishing the rest of us for it. Unusually smug for a political philosophy that’s never gotten anyone elected for anything above the local water board. All for legalized drugs and prostitution but probably wouldn’t want their kids blowing strangers for crack; all for slashing taxes for nearly every social service but don’t seem to understand why most people aren’t at all keen to trade in even the minimal safety net the US provides for 55-gallon barrels of beans and rice, a crossbow and a first-aid kit in the basement. Blissfully clueless that Libertarianism is just great as long as it doesn’t actually involve real live humans. Libertarians”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“Conservatives: Self-hating moral relativists, unless you can convince me that an intellectual class that publicly praises family values but privately engages in sodomy, coke and trophy wives is more aptly described in some other way.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“I don’t discount that in the end, everything I do, say, write and am will amount to a whole lot of not much; I just don’t think it’s a relevant metric. The relevant metric is: Have I constructed a life that gives me happiness, allows me to give happiness, and allows for this life to have meaning within its admittedly limited context? If I am succeeding in this particular metric, I think I’m doing pretty well.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to “Get Off My Property.” News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.   I”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“The goal shouldn’t be to make your child eat an entire set of encyclopedias by the age of six. The goal should be to encourage your child to be curious—to want to learn about the world, and explore the things that are in it.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“I support gay marriage because I support marriage.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“But whether it truly exists or not, humans need the idea of Hell, whether it be to scare us into a moral life, comfort the smug ones who believe everyone else is going there, or simply to remind us that the actions of our lives, good or ill, live beyond those lives themselves, and the accounting of them may occur past the day we ourselves happen to stop.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“Fundamentally, there’s no connection between whether someone is personally nice and whether they pursue an agenda inimical to what you perceive as desirable.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“Liberals: The stupidest and weakest members of the political triumvirate, they allowed conservatives to turn their name into a slur against them, exposing them as the political equivalent of the kid who lets the school bully pummel him with his own fists (Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself).”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“I’m guessing you thought I was way off on your political philosophy but right on the button about the other two. Just think about that for a while.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“Any parent who would force a two-year-old to stare at a computer when the kid would rather do something else deserves the rough side of a moving chainsaw blade.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“I think that a lot of the drive to have overachieving children is defensive—the idea of making sure your child is fully armed against all the other kids, whose parents are busy packing their little brains with facts so they can claw their way into the Ivy League over the broken bodies of their classmates. While”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008

“In my opinion, the goal of parenthood is to teach your kid how to explore the world and find himself or herself in it; this naturally requires that the focus is on the kid, and not the parent. The parent who is leaping in and mud-wrestling a teacher over a “B” or bribing the local daycare center staff to get their kid in is probably not focused on what the kid needs so much as what the parent thinks he needs to prove.”
― John Scalzi, Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008