Stranger in a Strange Land Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from Stranger in a Strange Land.

Language and Communication Quotes

All symbols were in Smith's vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard rightly. (3.78)

Freedom and Confinement Quotes

"He [Smith] can join us, or have a tray. This is Freedom Hall, my dear. Everyone does as he pleases…then if he does something I don't like, I [Jubal] kick him the hell out." (10.71)

Tradition and Customs Quotes

"Mike must learn human customs. He must take off his shoes in a mosque, wear his hat in a synagogue, and cover his nakedness when taboo requires, or our shamans will burn him for deviationism. But,...

Rules and Order Quotes

Johnson did not hit Jill as hard as he used to hit his wife before she left him, not nearly as hard as he hit prisoners who were reluctant to talk. Until then Smith had shown no expression and had...

Religion Quotes

"Though I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith—it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe." (13.46)

Sex Quotes

"My dear, there are aspects of sex of which it is impossible to communicate between the two sexes of our race. They are sometimes grokked by intuition across the gulf that separates us, by exceptio...

Transformation Quotes

"Woman, here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe—and you want to turn him into a copy of every fourth-rate conformist...

Identity Quotes

"Smith is an intelligent creature with the ancestry of a man, but he is more Martian than man. Until we came along he had never laid eyes on a man. He thinks like a Martian, feels like a Martian [â...