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a735d96
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I am only an egg.
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only
stranger
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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163ad41
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First is our unbreakable rule that every candidate must be a trained trooper, blooded under fire, a veteran of combat drops. No other army in history has stuck to this rule, although some came close. Most great military schools of the past--Saint Cyr, West Point, Sandhurst, Colorado Springs--didn't even pretend to follow it; they accepted civilian boys, trained them, commissioned them, sent them out with no battle experience to command men ..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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1f36b7f
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Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling--oh, he conceded that man, a social animal, could not avoid having government, any more than an individual man could escape his lifelong bondage to his bowels. But Harshaw did not have to like it. Simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it a "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost!"
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4cb2906
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Gratitude' is a euphemism for resentment.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8c1e122
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That boy skates close to the edge, he always has. He's utterly fearless and that's how he's made his reputation. But the rabbit is never more than two jumps ahead of the coyote . .
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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01c2242
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Don't bawl over Ben--not in my presence. The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death . . . and that we are all in for--if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cb17563
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The fact that Ben retained Cavendish shows how seriously he took the matter; you don't hunt rabbits with an elephant gun.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c1de65c
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There is an old song which asserts that 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ed2a1cd
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the government'--that's too sweeping a term. 'The government' is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not 'the government'--but what individuals?
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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780a327
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you are not in my debt. You can't be. Impossible--because I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d2e1445
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Son, quite aside from my own conditioned reflex against munching a roast haunch of--well, you, for example--quite aside from that trained-in emotional prejudice, for coldly practical reasons I regard our taboo against cannibalism as an excellent idea . . . because we are not civilized." "Huh?" "Obvious. If we didn't have a tribal taboo about the matter so strong that you honestly believed it was an instinct, I can think of a long list of pe..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2f573a1
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That old saw about "To understand all is to forgive all" is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them. My"
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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846e732
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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.
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sarcasm
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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b7ed70b
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I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people--and parasites.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ebaf876
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We necessarily sift a great many pebbles, much sand, for each nugget--but the nuggets are the reward.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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137096b
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Functional organization. How does one design an electric motor? Would you attach a bathtub to it, simply because one was available? Would a bouquet of flowers help? A heap of rocks? No, you would use just those elements necessary to its purpose and make it no larger than needed - and you would incorporate safety factors. Function controls design. So it is with revolution.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d499f87
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Gratitude' is a euphemism for resentment. Resentment from most people I do not mind--but from pretty little girls it is distasteful to me.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2b2db59
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But their refuge had been a dead end; all that inflexible old guard could do was to die and let younger minds, still limber, take over.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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0051f18
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Take your time and do it right, even if it takes another half second.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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f5ebf7e
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An Englishman and an Arab can learn to think each other's thoughts, in the other's language.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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b3f72b2
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Captain, that's not your style; you don't want to make money, you simply want to have money--in order to spend it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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f524af0
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If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby has to struggle to live you would be happier . . . and much richer. As it is, with some of you, I pity the poverty of your wealth.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2927923
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Well, 'hate' is the other luxury an instructor can never afford. We must not hate them, we must not like them; we must teach them.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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3aef31e
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Maybe the whole world held together only when you kept your attention centered on it and believed in it. If you let discrepancies creep in, you began to doubt and it began to go to pieces.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9569460
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Come on, you apes! You wanna live forever?
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Robert A. Heinlein / Alan Dean Foster |
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0b81d8b
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Hendrick, I have explained these matters to you because it is useless to punish a man unless he knows why he is being punished.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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6bd6426
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A person], having no self-respect, needs and demands a show of public respect.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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e0822d4
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You really aren't here at all. There isn't anybody but me. Jane, here alone in the dark, I miss you dreadfully!
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4569238
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Gulliver's Travels sardonically proposed that Irish babies be fattened for English tables;
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8e16e3c
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Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a8f3d4b
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To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives--such
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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97fc5dc
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One corner was filled by an elderly flat-top desk; the papers on it were neatly in order. Near it, on its own stand, was a small electric calculator.
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god
inspirational
soul
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cd89155
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Women and cats do what they do; there is nothing a man can do about it
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women
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cb167f3
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The faith I was reared in didn't require anybody to know anything. Just confess your sins and be saved, and there you were, safe in the arms of Jesus. A man could be too stupid to hit the floor with his hat . . . and yet he could be conclusively presumed to be one of God's elect, guaranteed an eternity of bliss, because he had been 'converted.' He might or might not become a Bible student; even that wasn't necessary . . . and he certainly d..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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85c7023
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I'm so busy doing what I must do that I don't have time for what I ought to do . . . and I never get a chance to do what I want to do!" "Son, that's universal. The way to keep that recipe from killing you is occasionally to do what you want to do anyhow. Which is right now."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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752adf2
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I wanted us to get out of production. Jake Schmidt, our production shop master, was a good man; nevertheless I was forever being jerked out of a warm creative fog to straighten out bugs in production--which is like being dumped out of a warm bed into ice water. This was the real reason why I had been doing so much nightwork and staying away from the shop in the daytime.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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076a90d
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Be raped quietly, you mean.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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33c348c
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You don't own a cat, he is a free citizen. Take
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5e63b87
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ago he had made a pact with himself to postulate a created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days--since each hypothesis, whole paradoxical, avoided the paradoxes of the other--with a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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3e464dd
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The Colorado River was at a record low and the towers in Lake Mead stood high out of the water. But the Angelenos committed communal suicide by watering lawns as usual.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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0576df3
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that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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069673e
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Locked you in a padded cell, with a certificate signed by three doctors, and allowed you mail on alternate leap years.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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21199b3
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I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting." Jill"
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d4d2d1b
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I don't pay attention to politics." "You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat." "I"
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Robert A. Heinlein |