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1733684
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God made alcohol and he made feet - and he made 'em so you could put 'em together and be happy!
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5844351
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I tried to dig out of the computer a call directory for Luna. But it was still sulking. I could not get it to list its own directory. So I tried some test problems on it. It insisted that 2 + 2 = 3.99999999999999999999999.... When I tried to get it to admit that 4 = 2 + 2, it became angry and claimed that 4 = 3.141592653589793238462643383279... So I gave up.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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f9ab5cb
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Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5401ea8
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good luck' follows careful preparation; 'bad luck' comes from sloppiness.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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442b8b0
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Yes, sir, there are things to see and do on the French Riviera without spending money.
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humour
risque
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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0a481a2
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I was not in bad health (aside from a cumulative hangover), I was still on the right side of thirty by a few days, and I was far from being broke. No police were looking for me, nor any husbands, nor any process servers; there was nothing wrong that a slight case of amnesia would not have cured. But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer. If I sound like a man with an acute case of self-pity, you are correct. ..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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93db366
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Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it.
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man
personality
human
god
nudity
taboo-breaking
taboos
martian
tribe
grace
work-ethic
psychotic
naked
society
innocence
mars
shame
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5524988
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The way to live a long time--oh, a thousand years or more--is something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it--but don't worry about it. Live each day as if you were to die next sunrise. Then face each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it, joyously. And never think about the past. No regrets, ever.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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e414303
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Anyone who clings to the historically untrue--and thoroughly immoral--doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the cont..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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47c8d42
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I was just pulling your leg and it came off in my hand.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2273569
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Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing--with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a154a88
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I'm too much old-timer to be rude to a woman no matter what - they have so much of what we have none of.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2ef5ab3
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As for logic and internal consistency, these mundane rules do not apply to sacred writings and never have...
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religion
jubal
rules
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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1ef63f6
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That was smart, that was engineering: never reinvent something that you can buy down the street.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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f484f6a
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Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring.
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limitations
humility
ignorance
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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f37e2a5
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I don't pay much attention to politics." "You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ecd51ff
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I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. 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,..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ef6bd90
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He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an insurance fee amounting to much less that the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state's means of exchange.
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money
theory
economic
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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03d1671
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There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary...because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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6771163
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But one way or another competing and weeding takes place . . . or a race goes downhill.
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sociology
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a3aa8c9
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The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4cc801b
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contrary to some opinions, it is better to be a dead hero than a live louse. Dying is messy and inconvenient but even a louse dies someday no matter what he will do to stay alive and he is forever having to explain his choice.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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00e50f7
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To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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6c0ac39
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Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either--he had long ago 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, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other--with, of course, a day off each year for sheer solipsist debauchery.
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hypotheses
paradoxes
the-universe
solipsism
indecision
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ba50901
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If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I've never heard of it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9210069
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Ben, why should anybody want that much power?" "Why does a moth fly toward light?"
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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45109f6
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The bugs are not like us. The Pseudo-Arachnids aren't even like spiders. They are arthropods who happen to look like a madman's conception of a giant intelligent spider, but their organization, psychological and economic, is more like that of ants or termites; they are communal entities, the ultimate dictatorship of the hive.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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e50c7ae
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Peace" is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence--unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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85c52c8
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Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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ef881a2
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a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4328607
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Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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e9e51a7
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The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable - from table tapping to the superiority of their own children - has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it --- especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5c0e246
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No one ever does anything but what he wants to do--'enjoys'--within the possibilities open to him. If I change a tire, it's because I enjoy it more than being stranded.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5c2d0d0
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Jill... had explained homosexuality, after Mike had read about it and failed to grok--and had given him rules for avoiding passes; she knew that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such. He had followed her advice and had made his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had had. But Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse a pass, say, from Duke--fortunately Mike's male water brothers were decidedly masculine, just as hi..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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f53e397
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Now let me get something straight: 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. So please don't invent a debt that does not exist, or before you know it you will be trying to feel gratitude - and that is the treacherous first step downward to complete moral degradation.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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d617ede
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Marriage is a young man's disaster and an old man's comfort.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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6a34e8f
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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. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs.
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society
justice
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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fe3fd34
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Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method.
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dry-humor
political-philosophy
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a96faeb
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I had no sympathy for him and still haven't. 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."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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184c703
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The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion . . . and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself--ultimate cost for perfect value.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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59ff758
|
I don't know Who is cranking; I'm pleased He doesn't stop.
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life
uncertainty
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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bca0507
|
Everybody is equal. Everybody! That's the law." "They are? Only from on top."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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84c4a2a
|
To the everlasting glory of the Infantry--
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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29c05e3
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If tempted by something that feels "altruistic," examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!"
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Robert A. Heinlein |