Read the books, not just random quotes. There are over 10,000 pages of text in the books. When read in its entirety you will get a different impression of the books than if you just read selected quotes. Selected quotes often give people the impression that Gorean culture is one-dimensional and that everything has a definitive answer. When the whole series is read most see that there are ”social norms“ but there are many who do not reflect them. The Gor books are about being true to yourself and true to nature; not about conformity to the social norm.

Don’t

Don’t use quotes from the Gor books to prove your point to non-Goreans. If people are not Gorean they don’t care about your quotes; usually you will just get them bitching about Goreans and how they quote science fiction as if it were the bible. This does nothing to help your cause and makes all of us Goreans look like idiots.

Don’t take quotes out of context. Be sure you know the context of a quote before using it. Be familiar with the character that you are quoting and the situation that they said it. Many of the characters in the books are unique individuals and do not represent everyone on Gor.

Don’t quote Gorean rhetoric as if it were Gorean reality. Norman had a habit of saying things like, ”an old Gorean saying says…“ and then following that Gorean saying with thousands of pages of text in direct conflict with it. I think of these old sayings as the Earth counterpart to racist or blond jokes: everyone knows them but nobody really believes them. Human nature is often too complicated to condense into tidy little ”truths“.

Do

 

Use more than one quote and quote more than one character. If you have a bunch of quotes from various sources you may be able to prove your point; having more than one source make it less likely that you have quoted a person who does not reflect the majority.