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b3fef34
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joking. A slave needs privileges to keep him quiet.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a54b329
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from George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra: "Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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534f4c3
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The practical reason for continuing our system is the same as the practical reason for continuing anything: It works satisfactorily.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2630ff9
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The discovery of life on Mars is something that, politically, they haven't figured out yet.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8fd07ec
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An air car was just landing in the garden by the pool and beings under it were complaining of injuries and indignities done them. Perhaps this was the trouble he could feel? Grasses were for walking on, flowers and bushes were not--this was a wrongness.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cc2bb20
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Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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6e5d38c
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Admittedly, what he had seen only the day before in this very room was just as intellectually stupefying as these later events--but the emotional impact was something else. A mouse was as much a miracle of biology as was an elephant; nevertheless there was an important difference--an elephant was bigger.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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43da109
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I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue?
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work
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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06e2e49
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Jill tried to reswallow her stomach.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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efe9443
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Marriage is a young man's disaster and an old man's comfort." He"
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8dca158
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Jubal longed for the days when a lawyer could cite the Bill of Rights and not have some over-riding Federation trickery defeat him.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8228747
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And you, Edward? Is there something in this world for which you'd surrender your life and your soul, if need be? You need not answer--I saw in your face and in your heart, last night, as you bent over the bed. Good art, good art--both of you. I have found several sorts of good and original art in this world, enough to justify encouraging your Artist to try again. But there was so much that was bad, poorly drawn and amateurish, that I could ..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cf56174
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Jubal waved the man back. "Private," he said firmly. "Family matter. Go have a drink." "Whose family?" "A death in yours, if you insist. Scat!"
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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780077d
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See here, son, if a deputy sheriff beats a prisoner to death, it's sweepstakes odds that the county commissioners didn't order it, didn't know it, and wouldn't have permitted it had they known. At worst they shut their eyes to it--afterwards--rather than upset their own applecarts. But assassination has never been an accepted policy in this country.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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78d530b
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He shall rule them with a rod of iron. --Revelations II:25
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c84cc2c
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Men are always for hire who like dirty work.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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02df1ed
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The moment I put it on, that suit became an old, familiar, and valued friend--and I became taller and wider across the shoulders. It could not have fit better if it had been made on my body. It knew things about me I wouldn't learn for years yet, and approved of them all.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cb3c515
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Being "up to something" was the unnamable and unforgiveable crime for which any American male could be indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in one breath. He wondered how things had gotten rigged so that the male half of the race must always behave to suit feminine rules and feminine logic, like a snotty-nosed school boy in front of a stern teacher."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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41dbe07
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it's well to take a look at what new rascals you are going to get before you jump at any chance to turn your present rascals out. Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried. Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents--a depre..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ceefa5c
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One more point. The aspect of Venus is most favorable and potentially dominant over that of Mars. Venus symbolizes yourself, of course, but Mars is both your husband and young Smith--as a result of the unique circumstances of his birth. This throws a double burden on you and you must rise to the challenge; you must demonstrate those qualities calm wisdom and restraint which are peculiarly those of woman.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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3e4c478
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The Japanese have five different ways to say 'thank you'--and every one of them translates literally as resentment, in various degrees. Would that English had the same built-in honesty on this point! Instead, English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. 'Gratitude,' for example.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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19f4a7d
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The second point I want to make is that you are right; the boy does indeed have to learn human customs. He must be taught to take off his shoes in a mosque and to wear his hat in a synagogue and to cover his nakedness when taboo requires it, or our tribal shamans will burn him for deviationism. But, child, by the myriad deceptive aspects of Ahriman, don't brainwash him in the process. Make sure he is cynical about each part of it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4276c24
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The problem with dictatorships--as I read somewhere recently--and with poisonous ideologies, too, is that they are like sharks. They must keep moving forward or die. What caused their aggression is not what you did. It's who they are.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5099335
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Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with her first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world.
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marriage
skills
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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74729c7
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To be court-martialed--for any reason--is eight times as bad for an officer as for an enlisted man. Offenses which will get privates kicked out (maybe with lashes, possibly without) rate death in an officer. Better never to have been born!
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4d9f5d4
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You evaded my question." "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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e459e4a
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She hesitated slightly. "I've seen what was called telekinesis with dice--but I'm no mathematician and I could not testify that what I saw was telekinesis." "Hell's bells, you wouldn't testify that the sun had risen if the day was cloudy."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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dbdafea
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Your business, son." "Yes. Self. I must grok each cusp myself alone. And so must you . . . and so must each self. Thou art God." "I don't accept the nomination." "You can't refuse it. Thou art God and I am God and all that groks is God, and I am all that I have ever been or seen or felt or experienced. I am all that I grok."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d9849ea
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This school is based on the idea that a man who can think correctly will automatically behave morally--or
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d17736d
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I wouldn't want Larry to die through my oversight. Larry is entitled to work out his own damn foolishness without having it cut short through my carelessness. Duke, I believe in everyone's working out his own damnation his own way . . . but nevertheless that is no excuse for an adult to give a dynamite cap to a baby as a toy.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9c1d10a
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Strictly speaking, the Patrol is not a military organization at all." "Sir?" "I know, I know--you are trained to use weapons, you are under orders, you wear a uniform. But your purpose is not to fight, but to prevent fighting, by every possible means. The Patrol is not a fighting organization; it is the repository of weapons too dangerous to entrust to military men."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ef54c6e
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I'm not feisty. But when you're as small as I am and female if you don't stand up for your rights, you're sure to be pushed around by big, hairy, smelly men with delusions about male superiority.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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6784980
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I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones--by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether a universe or a smaller one.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2e1226a
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Men on the surface of a planet are as helpless against men in spaceships as a man would be trying to conduct a rock-throwing fight from the bottom of a well. The man at the top of the well has gravity working for him.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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1a2029b
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hurry" was not a concept that could be symbolized in the Martian language and therefore must be presumed to be unthinkable. Speed, velocity, simultaneity, acceleration, and other mathematical abstractions having to do with the pattern of eternity were part of Martian mathematics, but not of Martian emotion."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a66e8cb
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They flew her," Matt pointed out. "Sure they did--and my hat's off to them. But it takes heroes to fly a box as primitive as this and I'm not the hero type."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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15abb29
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answered his telephone himself if he happened to be at hand when it signalled because each call offered good odds that he would be justified in being gratifyingly rude to some stranger for daring to invade his privacy without cause--"cause" by Harshaw's definition, not by the stranger's."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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48bdae2
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Baskalarinin isine burnunu sokmamak insanin sahip olabilecegi bilgeligin yuzde seksenidir... kalan yuzde yirmi de pek onemli degildir zaten.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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bb7006c
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I did it for a little girl who was about to go charging out and maybe get herself killed much the same way--if I didn't do something. I did it because she was my guest and I temporarily stood in loco parentis to her. I did it because she was all guts and gallantry but too ignorant to be allowed to monkey with such a buzz saw; she'd get hurt. But you, my cynical and sin-stained chum, know all about those buzz saws. If your own asinine carele..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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771af78
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Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8f7e0bd
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Dorcas, for the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, useless, no-good parasite." She nodded and yawned again. "Everybody knows that." "Never mind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to stop being sensible--a time to stand up and be counted--strike a blow for liberty--smite the wicked." --
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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880f3d7
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There is no such thing as a humane war.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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fca13be
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Human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for creations of eunuchs.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9ad0a0c
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Unexpected discorporation was always rare on Mars; Martian taste in such matters called for life to be a rounded whole, with physical death taking place at the appropriate and selected instant. This artist, however, had become so preoccupied with his work that he had forgotten to come in out of the cold; by the time his absence was noticed his body was hardly fit to eat. He himself had not noticed his own discorporation and had gone right o..
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Robert A. Heinlein |