Robert A. Heinlein Quotes - Page 9

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• Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow if tomorrow might improve the odds.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Odds, Understanding, Delay

  "Time Enough for Love" by Robert A. Heinlein, Ace, (p. 334), August 1988.

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• English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Vocabulary, Way, Tongue

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• There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Years, Sweat, Skulls

  Robert A. Heinlein (1982). “Glory Road”, Berkley

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• When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Exercise, Political, Violence

  "Fictional character: Jean Rasczak". "Starship Troopers", www.imdb.com. 1997.

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• You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Conquer, Propaganda

  Robert A. Heinlein (2007). “Glory Road”, p.318, Macmillan

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• Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing the risks you can't avoid. This permits you to play out the game untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Games, Play, Risk

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.331, Penguin

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• Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Democracy, Assumption

  Time Enough for Love "Intermission" (1973)

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• Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Running, Events, Frozen

  Robert A. Heinlein (2009). “The Rolling Stones”, p.154, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Eye, Enemy, Villain

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.224, Penguin

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• Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.]

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Courage, Fear, Men

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.231, Penguin

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• Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Inspirational, Mom, Mother

  Robert A. Heinlein (2005). “Have Space Suit, Will Travel”, p.183, Simon and Schuster

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• Behind every mystery lies another mystery.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Lying, Mystery, Behinds

  Robert A. Heinlein (1985). “Job, a Comedy of Justice”, Del Rey

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• In the eighty or ninety years I have given to this subject, trying to trace out the meanderings of their twisty little minds, the only thing that I have learned for certain about women is that when a gal is gonna, she's gonna. All a man can do is cooperate with the inevitable.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Women, Years, Mind

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• I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Country, Thinking, Years

  Guest of Honor Speech at the 29th World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, Washington, 1961.

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• If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Ideas, Giving, Creative

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.237, Penguin

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• Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Prison, Solitary

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• A community where everyone is a ruthless murderer, with handy access to death-dealing devices, is a very polite community.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Community, Ruthless, Polite

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• The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it:; once you can honestly say, "I don't know", then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Ideas, Long, Niche

  "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, chapter 18, p. 230, 1985.

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• It's a man's business to be what he is, and to be it in style.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Style

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Methuselah's Children”, p.84, Hachette UK

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• No storyteller has been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Dream, Science, Mad

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.41, Penguin

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• The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Liberty, Selfishness, Libertarian

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.325, Penguin

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• Brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Real, Commodity, Real Value

  Robert A. Heinlein (1982). “Friday”

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• The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Baby, Men, Principles

  Robert A. Heinlein (2013). “The Man Who Sold the Moon and Orphans of the Sky”, p.206, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Writing, Way, Rooms

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• The country and culture commonly known as "America" had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degrees---its religious revivals were often hysterical in a fashion almost Dionysian.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Country, Fashion, Religious

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