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da4ce02
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If it has to be done, a man--a real man--shoots his own dog himself; he doesn't hire a proxy who may bungle it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c3bd638
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There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.
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preparation
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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28b3db2
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To die trying is the proudest humans thing.
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mortality
self-sacrifice
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5658ae9
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To support his austerely upholstered nest and its rabble staff he put forth minimum effort for maximum return simply because it was easier to be rich than to be poor - Harshaw merely wished to live exactly as he liked, doing whatever he thought was best for him.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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50392dd
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I had taken a partner once before-but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c00fa83
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I am all that I grok.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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03ee19d
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He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two of the papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c20c08d
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Some people are ants by nature; they have to work, even when it's useless. Few people have a talent for constructive laziness.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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1b29f6a
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Getting a problem analyzed is two-thirds of solving it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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b7b8187
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The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable- from table tapping to the superiority of their children- has never been plumbed.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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34351c8
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though weather is important while it happens it seems to me to be pretty dull to look back on. You can take descriptions of most any sort of weather out of an almanac and stick them in just anywhere; they'll probably fit.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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7aa3794
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You have to have been out on a long patrol to appreciate this properly. You need to have looked forward to your day of guard duty, for the privilege of standing two hours out of each six with your spine against bulkhead thirty and your ears cocked for just the of a female voice. I suppose it's actually easier in the all-stag ships... but I'll take the Rodger Young. It's good to know that the ultimate reason you are fighting actually exist..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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0a0f04e
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Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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762af90
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Customs, morals--is there a difference? Woman, do you realize what you are doing? 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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taboo
custom
moral
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2f53778
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That God is in truth the sort of bloodthirsty paranoid Who would rend to bits forty-two children for the crime of sassing one of his priests. Don't ask me about the Front Office's policies; I just work here.
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religion
god
stranger-in-a-strange-land
priests
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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9aa4dd1
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I hate to tell you this, but you are just stupid and eager and sincere enough to make the kind of officer that men love to follow into some silly predicament.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4098f78
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I want to spit back at a camel and ask him what he's so sour about. Maybe camels are the real 'Old Ones' on this planet ... and that what is wrong with the place.
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zoos
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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aea5285
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I wonder how harmless such people are? To what extent civilization is retarded by the laughing jackasses, the empty-minded belittlers?
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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5eb8aeb
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Foster had in common with every great religious leader of that planet two traits: he had an extremely magnetic personality, and sexually he did not fall near the human norm. On Earth great religious leaders were always either celibate or the antithesis. Foster was not celibate. (p.289)
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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483752f
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The golden sunshine of Italy congealed into tears. Here's to alcoholic brotherhood ... much more suited to the frail human soul, if any, than any other sort.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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2c48be4
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Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, "equality" is a disaster."
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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09edf93
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His claim to Mars is lawyers' hogwash; as a lawyer myself I need not respect it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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fafa33c
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in a matter of some generations all the stupid ones will die out and those with your discipline will inherit the Earth
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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1cdd371
|
Value' has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human--'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitively different or trade would be impossible.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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c69d3b2
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War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. Robert A. Heinlein - Starship Troopers
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war
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a10ce19
|
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government - sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive - and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of the..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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db35a9c
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There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was-- "Man is the animal who laughs,"
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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943d284
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The verdict to be passed on the third planet around Sol was never in doubt.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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627fb7c
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certain feet were made for stepping on ,in order to improve the breed, promote the general welfare and minimize the ancient insolence of office..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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fb306f7
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Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives--but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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74ad205
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A generation which ignores history has no past--and no future.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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fe7edd0
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Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is.
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people
love
slaves
property
ownership
land
natural
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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85abb5d
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There is a misconception, geocentric and anthropomorphic, common to the large majority the the earthbound, which causes them to visualize a planetary system stereoscopically. The mind's eye sees a sun, remote from a backdrop of stars, and surrounded by spinning apples -- the planets. Step out on your balcony and look. Can you tell the planets from the stars? Venus you may pick out with ease, but could you tell it from Canopus, if you had no..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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15bf799
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My dear, religion is a null area in the law. A church can do anything any organization can do--and has no restrictions. It pays no taxes, need not publish records, is effectively immune to search, inspection, or control--and a church is anything that calls itself a church. Attempts have been made to distinguish between 'real' religions entitled to immunities, and 'cults.' It can't be done, short of establishing a state religion . . . a cure..
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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b9b9235
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obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cb89135
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Age does not bring wisdom, Ben, but it does give perspective . . . and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a576156
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Each sunrise is a precious jewel . . . for it may never be followed by its sunset.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a98692e
|
We organized First and Second Volunteer Defense Gunners of Free Luna-two regiments so that First could snub lowly Second and Second could be jealous of First.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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4ec798a
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Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impos..
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inspirational
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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e165b8f
|
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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fb203d2
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But you don't have to take his advice. Whether you use his ideas, or whether they spark some different plan--make your decision and snap out orders. The one thing--the only thing!--that can strike terror in the heart of a good platoon sergeant is to find that he's working for a boss who can't make up his mind.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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46017d0
|
Horace was a nice little guy who looked like one of his own baboons; he turned me over to a Doctor Vargas who was a specialist in exotic biologies--the same Vargas who was on the Second Venus Expedition. He told me what had happened and I looked at the gibbons, meantime rearranging my prejudices.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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cbfb71b
|
They insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own, and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing, is one that they can't or won't entertain.
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Robert A. Heinlein |
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a52957d
|
Or maybe he was seeing double. Bad stuff, gin. Should 'ave switched to rum a long time ago. Good stuff, rum. You could drink it, or take a bath in it. No, that was gin -- he meant Joe.
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Robert A. Heinlein |