Robert A. Heinlein Quotes - Page 18

Quotes about:

• Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Jobs, Dad, Math

  Robert A. Heinlein (2005). “Have Space Suit, Will Travel”, p.180, Simon and Schuster

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• There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships or missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time. We've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  War, Down And, Way

  "Starship Troopers". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, 1959.

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• Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Psychosis, Neurosis, Sin

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.106, Hachette UK

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• Never insult anyone by accident.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Comeback, Insult, Accidents

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• Gratitude is a euphemism for resentment.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Gratitude, Resentment, Euphemism

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.105, Penguin

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• The Stone trembled and threw herself outward bound, toward Saturn. In her train followed hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of thousands of restless, rolling Stones . . . to Saturn . . . to Uranus, to Pluto . . . rolling on out to the stars . . . outward bound to the ends of the Universe.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Stars, Rolling, Stones

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• Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Space, Orbit, Earth

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• Don't appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he's not at home and never was at home, and couldn't care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy- live or die- is strictly your business and the universe doesn't care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it- 'Thou art God!'

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Father, Home

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• I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Cat, Men, Eight

  Robert A. Heinlein (1959). “The Door Into Summer”, Roc

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• People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  People, Missing, Slugs

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

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• The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Selfish, Race, Weakness

  Robert A. Heinlein (2012). “The Star Beast”, p.190, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• Unarmed hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Fighting, Hands

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.475, Penguin

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• That old saw about the early bird just proves that the worm should have stayed in bed.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Morning, Should Have, Bird

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• The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved--if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Ordinary, Doe

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• If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Ignorance, Light, Intellectual

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• If possible,
  leave room for your enemy
  to become your friend.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Enemy, Rooms, Ifs

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• All my enemies are self-appointed.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Self, Enemy

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• Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Emotional, Self

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.346, Hachette UK

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• Please don't invent a debt that does not exist, or next you will be trying to feel gratitude - and that is the treacherous first step toward complete moral degradation.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Gratitude, Trying, Doe

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.105, Penguin

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• In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to 'civil master.'

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Mature, Masters, Equal

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.228, Penguin

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• Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Love, Jealousy, Mistake

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.340, Penguin

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• Around the time of the Terran Caesar Augustus, a Martian artist had been composing a work of art. It could have been called a poem, a musical opus, or a philosophical treatise; it was a series of emotions arranged in tragic, logical necessity. Since it could be experienced by a human only in the sense in which a man blind from birth might have a sunset explained to him, it does not matter which category it be assigned.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Philosophical, Sunset

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.93, Penguin

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• In a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Variables, Helpful, Problem

  Robert A. Heinlein (2005). “Have Space Suit, Will Travel”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

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• There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Unbearable, Nuisance

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.138, Penguin

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• Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Wisdom, Evil, Goodness

  Robert A. Heinlein (1983). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, Berkley

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