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Ability
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein, from Time Enough for Love: Notebooks of Lazarus Long
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Atheism
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Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Belief
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Belief gets in the way of learning.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Cats
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Never try to outstubborn a cat.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love (The Notebooks of Lazarus Long)
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Censorship
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The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.
-Robert A. Heinlein, on censorship
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Chance
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To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Experience
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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.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Faith
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I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
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Gratitude
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Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.
-Robert A. Heinlein, To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
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Gun Control
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An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon
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Happiness
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Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result. Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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History
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A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Learning
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Learning isn't a means to an end; it is an end in itself.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Love
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Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Men & Women
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Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Money
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There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
A Libertarian Movement slogan
-Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, 1966
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Oppression
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When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, - not anything - you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
-Robert A. Heinlein, If This Goes On, Revolt in 2100
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People
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No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Professionalism
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Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Progress
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Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Religion
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History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1972
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Selfishness
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The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Sin
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A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Technology
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Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.
-Robert A. Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)
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Thought
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Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion
-Robert A. Heinlein
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Books by and about Robert A. Heinlein