Robert A. Heinlein (1907 – 1988)
One of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of science fiction of the 20th Century.
Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.
By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him.
Im not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool.
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy"is the most amazing with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place.
All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can and must be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly and no doubt will keep on trying.
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.
I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation.
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man.
But it's lovely work if you can stomach it.
If the human animal has any value at all, he is too valuable to be property. If he has an inner dignity, he is much too proud to own other men. I don't give a damn how scrubbed and perfumed he may be, a slave owner is subhuman.
Son, suppose you tend to your knitting and I tend to mine.
Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn't often, on their own, the hard way.
A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.
Friday, don't despise assassins indiscriminately. As with any tool, merit or demerit lies in how it is used.
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing risks you cant avoid. This permits you to play out the game happily, untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.
There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else.