01c. 1947 ADSupport for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
02c. 1947 ADAny government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat driver” syndrome.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
03c. 1947 ADOur behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
04c. 1947 ADThe way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
05c. 1947 ADI'm too much old-timer to be rude to a woman no matter what - they have so much of what we have none of.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
07c. 1947 ADMany older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse---and without examining evidence which their “common sense” told them was impossible.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
08c. 1947 ADRandom chance is not sufficient to explain random chance. ~Jubal HarshawRobert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
09c. 1947 ADThe Universe was a damned silly place at best . . . but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings "just happened" to be some atoms that "just happened" to get together in configurations which "just happened" to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations "just happened" to possess self-awareness and that two such "just happened" to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside. No, Jubal would not buy the "just happened" theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe--in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
10c. 1947 ADBut one way or another competing and weeding takes place . . . or a race goes downhill.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
11c. 1947 ADYou can't believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
12c. 1947 ADIf you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
13c. 1947 ADThe less respect an older person deserves the more certain he is to demand it from anyone younger.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
14c. 1947 AD. . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
15c. 1947 ADThe great trouble with religion - any religion - is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason - but one cannot have both.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
16c. 1947 ADLiberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
17c. 1947 ADIn the twentieth century, nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America---and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
18c. 1947 ADthere used to be, dirtside, a legal defenses called "diminished capacity" and "not guilty by reason on insanity." These concepts would bewilder a Loonie. In Luna City a man would necessarily be of diminished mental capacity to even think about rape; to carry one out would be the strongest possible proof of insanity - but among Loonies such mental disorders would not gain a rapist any sympathy. loonies do not psychoanalyze a rapist; they kill him. Now. Fast. Brutally.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
19c. 1947 ADHow is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in his profession if his victim fails to cooperate?Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
20c. 1947 ADWhen 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 / quote ↗
21c. 1947 ADLike every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
23c. 1947 ADProgress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
24c. 1947 ADI’ve been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they don’t give kissing their whole attention. They can’t. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus—or their chances of making the gal—or their own techniques in kissing—or maybe worry about jobs, or money, or will husband or papa or the neighbors catch on. Mike doesn’t have technique . . . but when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe . . . and the moment is eternal because he doesn’t have any plans and isn’t going anywhere. Just kissing you.Robert A. Heinlein / quote ↗
