heinlein

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax
and get used to the idea.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is
essential to your own.

Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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Happiness consists in getting enough sleep.  Just that, nothing more.

Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
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I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable,
I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free
because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I
do.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can
look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better
artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used
to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin
was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and
force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than
that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even
you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly
at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you
feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who
ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the
merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old
doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it
does to them.

Robert A. Heinlein
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, die gallantly. 

Specialization is for insects.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind
often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the
love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they are almost
incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.

Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth
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Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to
find easier ways to do something.

Robert A. Heinlein
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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Never try to outstubborn a cat.

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
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There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does
not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
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Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice,
the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the
less it tires you.

Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
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Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in
private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are
invented nonsense.

Robert A. Heinlein
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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...

Robert A. Heinlein, Friday
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Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it's more
sanitary.

Robert A. Heinlein
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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.

Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and
why. Then do it.

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of time and besides it
annoys the pig.

Robert A. Heinlein
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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 impossible. It is
easier to deal with a footpad than it is with the leech who wants
"just a few minutes of your time, pleasethis won't take long." Time is
your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If
you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests,
they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up
100 percent of your timeand squawk for more!

So learn to say no and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise
you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work,
and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble
away your life and leave none of it for you.

(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or
even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it
is "expected" of you.)

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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There is no such thing as "Just a cat".

Robert A. Heinlein
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May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and
censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes
to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not
know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy
the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has
been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can
control a free man, whose mind is free.  No, not the rack nor the
atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you
can do is kill him.

Robert A. Heinlein
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The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is
that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes,
wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by
their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this
flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to
bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least
productive industry in all history.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law
if it acquires the political power to do so.

Robert A. Heinlein
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How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.

Robert A. Heinlein
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Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.
Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space SuitWill Travel
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There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
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Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.
Robert A. Heinlein
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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.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Robert A. Heinlein
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One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
Robert A. Heinlein
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A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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Love" is a that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own...Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition.  The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy
Robert A. Heinlein
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An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon
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Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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Yield to temptation...it may not pass your way again!
Robert A. Heinlein
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The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories.  A perfect democracy, a warm body democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.  It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens... which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens.  What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all.  But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it... which for the majority translates as Bread and Circuses.

Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure.  Democracy often works beautifully at first.  But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state.  For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invaderthe barbarians enter Rome.
Robert A. Heinlein
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In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate  and quickly.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector...and miss.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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When one teaches, two learn.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Everything in excess!  To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites.  Moderation is for monks.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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Men rarely  if ever  dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. 
Robert A. Heinlein
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Belief gets in the way of learning.
Robert A. Heinlein
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No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Secrecy begets tyranny.
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
Robert A. Heinlein
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What are the facts? Again and again and again  what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what the stars foretell, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable verdict of history  what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
Robert A. Heinlein
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Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
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Political tags  such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth  are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.
Robert A. Heinlein
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At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different--in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.
Robert A. Heinlein
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I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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A generation which ignores history has no past  and no future.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Live and learn, or you don't live long.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
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It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person's behavior. The most you or any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it.  Talking doesn't prove it.
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.
Robert A. Heinlein,Starship Troopers
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The more you love, the more you can love--and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules about sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.
Robert A. Heinlein
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But goodness alone is never enough.  A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good.  Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
Robert A. Heinlein,Stranger in a Strange Land
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The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Do this. Don't do that. Stay back in line. Where's tax receipt? Fill out form. Let's see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead but first get permit.
Robert A. Heinlein
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I came, I saw, she conquered."
The original Latin seems to have been garbled.
Robert A. Heinlein,Time Enough for Love
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Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.
Robert A. Heinlein,Double Star
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God created men to test the souls of women.
Robert A. Heinlein,Job: A Comedy of Justice
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Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.
Robert A. Heinlein,Have Space SuitWill Travel
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There is no safety this side of the grave
Robert A. Heinlein,Stranger in a Strange Land
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I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Does history record any case in which the majority was right?
Robert A. Heinlein
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I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.
Robert A. Heinlein,Friday
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A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.
Robert A. Heinlein,Time Enough for Love
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Take big bites. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
Robert A. Heinlein,Time Enough for Love
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Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just
as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how
well the librarians do their jobs.  Librarians didn't look glamorous to
me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Remember though, your best weapon is between your ears and under your scalp -provided it's loaded.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen.  Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
Robert A. Heinlein,Time Enough for Love
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One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
Robert A. Heinlein,Time Enough for Love
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My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought.  Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it.  So now I do what pleases myself.
Robert A. Heinlein,Stranger in a Strange Land
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