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0ee8652
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Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code -- family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human a..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d86bd00
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Were you born stupid, Heinrich, or did you have to study?
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sarcasm
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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56b33cb
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Pay it forward.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c5bf46f
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Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn't care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-..
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war
history
heinlein
starship-troopers
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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1bcba56
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Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically.
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prudence
patriarchy
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a717240
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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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30b61d0
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There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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dbbe381
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A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it--it keeps him upright.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9b31c92
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Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation. . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These ladies who won't deign to do that- an..
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modern-art
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4362b94
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Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you're ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he's as happy as a worm in an apple - asleep.
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sleep
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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32eb7d4
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doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9007f9a
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Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That's a law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law.
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money
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ad961be
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We're simply trying to survive--and the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible and concentrate on what's possible.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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b959d23
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People who are busy and happy don't write diaries; they are too busy living.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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68f0b36
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But there seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously -- after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs ..
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entertainers
mistaken-attribution
idols
opinions
rationality
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ddb19e7
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The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights' . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ce32327
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If Satan should ever replace God he would find it necessary to assume the attributes of Divinity.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9f55d2b
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She taught me to love by loving me, and I learned--rather slowly; I wasn't too good a pupil, being set in my ways and lacking her natural talent. But I did learn. Learned that supreme happiness lies in wanting to keep another person safe and warm and happy, and being privileged to try.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2494a82
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History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- ie., none to speak of
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religion
truth
theology
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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f0cb29e
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It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
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truism
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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48efd95
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It would take centuries and he must grow and grow and grow, but he was in no hurry--he grokked that Eternity and the ever-beautifully-changing Now were identical.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d387e6b
|
English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.
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feelings
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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1cffdab
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My vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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66e8f9d
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Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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32653a9
|
Many 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."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c7bf557
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The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it -- once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth.
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truth
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d46df2a
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the word 'love' designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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def61f8
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You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets frustrated. After he pees in it himself, he likes the flavor much better, so he buys it.
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humor
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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6385816
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Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed--to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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553a684
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I pity the poverty of your wealth.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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e010c6f
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It's a long story. Want a refill?" "No, let's start the steak. Where's the button?" "Right here." "Well, push it." "Me? You offered to cook." "Ben Caxton, I will lie here and starve before I will get up to push a button six inches from your finger" "As you wish." He pressed the button. "But don't forget who cooked dinner."
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stranger-in-a-strange-land
science-fiction
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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3e0879e
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But, do you know, once you get used to it's rather cute. I mean, if a girl looks alright to start with, she still looks alright with her head smooth.
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haircuts
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d55cc3c
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But if you didn't have more urgent things to do after supper [in boot camp], you could write a letter, loaf, gossip, discuss the myriad mental shortcomings of sergeants and, dearest of all, talk about the female of the species (we became convinced that there was no such creatures, just mythology created by inflamed imaginations - one boy in our company claimed to have seen a girl, over at regimental headquarters; he was unanimously judged a..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d97a017
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Any 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."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5cc729f
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Till the stars grow old and our sun grows cold? Will you fight for us, lie for us, love us - and let us love you?
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8e96b4e
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Straining at gnats and swallowing camels is a required course in all law schools.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2a24d09
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The best things in history are accomplished by people who get tired of being shoved around.
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rebellion
spiritual-warfare
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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08272a7
|
Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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97ca67a
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The country and culture commonly known as "America" had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degrees---its religious revivals were often hysterical in a fashion almost Dionysian."
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religion
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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3d29ca9
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Anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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51d3f27
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But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees.
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education
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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8d94423
|
All those religions--they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying.
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contradictions
life-and-death
religions
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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916b27e
|
That we were slaves I had known all my life--and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold--but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a4326a9
|
There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service.
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volunteerism
soldiering
soldier
|
Robert A. Heinlein |