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the key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.
(bruce lee)
may the road rise before you; may the wind be ever on your back; and may you be half an hour in heaven before the devil knows you're dead.
don't confuse us with the facts; our minds are made up.
don't look at me in that tone of voice, it smells.
all that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. (attrib. edmund burke)
heinlein quotations
'Why don't they make more science fiction movies?' The answer to any question starting, 'Why don't they' is almost always, 'Money.'
I am interested in the fact that you have unusually keen minds. However, that lays us open, and I am including myself in this, lays us open to dangers that don't hit the phlegmatic, the more stolid. Unless we are able to predict, we are even more likely to be subjected to functional insanities than those around us.... There's a way out, there's something that we can do to protect ourselves, something that would protect the rest of the human race from the sort of things that are happening to them, and are going to happen to them. It's very simple, and it's right down our alley: the use of the scientific method. I'm not talking about the scientific method used in the laboratory. The scientific method can be used to protect ourselves from serious difficulties of other sorts, getting our teeth smashed in, in our everyday life, twenty-four hours of the day. I should say what I mean by the scientific method. Since I have to define it in terms of words, I can't be as clear as I might be if I were able to make an extensional definition. But I mean a comparatively simple thing by the scientific method: the ability to look at what goes on around you. Listen to what you hear, observe, note facts, delay your judgment, and make your own predictions. Thatıs all there is, really, to the scientific method: to be able to distinguish facts from non-facts.
Look, friends, the only possible way to enjoy life is not to be afraid to die. A zest for living requires a willingness to die; you cannot have the first without the second. The '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s can be loaded with the zest for living, high excitement, and gutsy adventure for any truly human person. 'Truly human'? I mean you descendants of cavemen who outlasted the saber-tooth, you who sprang from the loins of the Vikings, you whose ancestors fought the Crusades and were numbered the Golden Horde. Death is the lot of all of us and the only way the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all eternity.
I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!
I don't like suppression of the truth for any reason. I think the word 'classified' stinks!
I do not think that a group of people is justified in locking up a human being. If I had my way, all jails and prisons would be torn down, utterly abolished!
I hate Communism most for its cold-blooded murder of the truth! 'Pravda' doesn't mean 'truth.' Pravda means whatever serves the world Communist revolution.
"... I predicted that the years immediately following 1941 would be a period of great and radical change... change so great that most people would not be able to understand it, assimilate it, cope with it, and that the whole world would start behaving irrationally, crazy. Does anyone want to dispute that it has? If so, I won't argue, I'll simply refer them to the headlines in tonight's paper. I also said that science fiction fans, because they were interested in the future and believed in change, would not be so shocked by these drastic changes we have all seen these past twenty years and thereby stood a better chance of not going crazy when the rest of the world did. I can't prove that I was correct in this prediction, or pious hope, by referring you to the headlines. But, I can't see that science fiction fans are one whit crazier than they were twenty years ago...."
By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man, man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him.
Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.
Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another, but which one? Differences are crucial.
Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet you can't win.
Peace is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story-- unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when 'peace' meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
...from the ignoramuses we get for recruits I've reached the conclusion that this new-fangled 'functional educational' has abolished studying in favor of developing their cute little personalities.
...Think about it. Politics is just a name for the way we get things done... without fighting. We dicker and compromise and everybody thinks he has received a raw deal, but somehow after a tedious amount of talk we come up with some jury-rigged way to do it without getting anybody's head bashed in. That's politics. The only other way to settle a dispute is by bashing a few heads in... and that is what happens when one or both sides is no longer willing to dicker. That's why I say politics is good even when it is bad... because the only alternative is force -- and somebody gets hurt.
Don't use that word (fantastic) to a lawyer; straining at gnats and swallowing camels is a required course in law school... In the fifteenth century the Pope deeded the Western Hemisphere to Portugal and Spain, and nobody cared that the real estate was occupied by people with their owns laws, customs, and property rights. His grant was effective, too -- Look at a map and notice where Spanish is spoken an Portuguese is spoken.
Human bipolarity was both binding force and driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists have exaggerated this, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for the creations of eunuchs.
Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling- Oh, Harshaw conceded that man, a social animal, could no more avoid government than an individual could escape the necessity of bowel movements. But simply because an evil was necessary was no reason to term it 'good.' He wished that government would wander off and get lost!
I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork.
Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to, every time. If it pains them, to make a choice- if the 'choice' looks like a 'sacrifice' -- you can be sure that it is no nobler than the discomfort caused by greediness... the necessity of having to decide between two things you want when you can't have both. The ordinary bloke suffers every time he chooses between spending a buck on beer or tucking it away for his kids, between getting up to go to work and losing his job. But he always chooses that which hurts least or pleasures most. The scoundrel and the saint make the same choices....
A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore.
Never attempt to teach a pig to sing. It is a waste of time and it annoys the pig.
Casualties are just as heavy in one war as in another...because death comes just one to the customer.
The most dangerous animal in all history walks on two legs...and sometimes slinks along country roads.
While the rest of the human race are descended from monkeys, redheads derive from cats.
Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. And another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible results. Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.
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.
There is one unmistakable sign of the collapse of good manners: dirty public washrooms.
But how man men are truly wise in their handling of women? In all history you can count them on the fingers of one thumb.
There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into: that's the way we're built and I assume there's some reason for it.
Yes, maybe it's just one colossal big joke, with no point to it. But I can tell you this, Andy, whatever the answers are, here's one monkey that's going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.
From the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which over crowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness.
The people who come out on top write the official versions found in history books, history that is no more honest than is autobiography.
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
Always yield to temptation: it may never pass your way again.
He's an honest politician, he stays bought.
The ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them.
Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
The third 'right'? - the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. 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.
...the most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win.
Logic is a feeble reed, friend. 'Logic' proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.
The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can 'prove' anything from it.
I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists.
Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.
But philosophy wasn't the answer. There really isn't anything to philosophy. Did you ever eat that cotton candy they sell at fairs? Well, philosophy is like that--it looks as if it were really something, and it's awfully pretty, and it tastes sweet, but when you go to bite it, you can't get your teeth into it, and when you try to swallow, there isn't anything there. Philosophy is word-chasing, as significant as a puppy chasing its tail.
The meek shall inherit the earth, a 6 foot plot above them.
I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.
'Juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and failure to solve it.
The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand--that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their
'rights.' The result of which should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature.
Ah, yes, the 'unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'?\r\rAs to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. 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.
What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the county and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.
Math is hard work and it occupies your mind -- and it doesn't hurt to learn all you can of it, no matter what rank you are; everything of any importance is founded on mathematics.
Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run these are the only people who count...
But does Man have any 'right' to spread through the universe? Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics--you name it--is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what man is--not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be. The Universe will let us know--later--whether or not Man has any 'right' to expand through it.
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. 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.
I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years , the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped ,or turned back, for their private benefit.
The death rate is the same for us as for anybody...one person, one death sooner or later.
Real beauty is likely to scare a man off, or else make him quite unmanageable, whereas prettiness, properly handled, is an asset.
Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do.
A rational anarchist believes that concepts, such as 'state' and 'society' and 'government' have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame.. as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and _nowhere_ else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world.. aware that his efforts will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failiure.
History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
From politics I have come to believe the following:
(1) Most people are basically honest, kind and decent.
(2) The American people are wise enough to run their own affairs. The do not need Fuehrers, Strong Men, Technocrats, Commissars, Silver Shirts, Theocrats, or any other sort of dictator.
(3) Americans have a compatible community of ambitions. Most of them don't want to be rich but do want enough economic security to permit them to raise families in decent comfort without fear of the future. They want the least government necessary to this purpose and don't greatly mind what the other fellow does as long as it does not interfere with them living their own lives. As a people we are neither money mad nor prying. We are easy-going and anarchistic. We may want to keep up with the Joneses -- but not with the Vanderbilts. We don't like cops.
(4) Democracy is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living, dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself -- or it ceases to be democracy, even if the shell and form remains.
(5) One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way -- prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs. Hitler's government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.
(6) Democracy is the most efficient form of government ever invented by the human race. On the record, it has worked better in peace and in war than fascism, communism, or any other form of dictatorship. As for the mythical yardstick of 'benevolent' monarchy or dictatorship -- there ain't no such animal!
(7) A single citizen, with no political connections and no money, can be extremely effective in politics.
Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of the opinions of their inferiors.
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.
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
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 she used to be. A GREAT artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is, and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be, more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, 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 that eighteen in her heart.
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excssive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as 'empty,' 'meaningless,' or 'dishonest,' and scorn to use them. No matter how 'pure' their motives, they thereby throw sand into the machinery that does not work too well at best.
A man does not insist on physical beauty in a woman who builds up his morale. After a while he realizes that she is beautiful--he just hadn't noticed it at first.
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws--always for _other_ fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because _not one_ of those people said: 'Please pass this so that I won't be able to so something I know I should stop.' Nyet, tovarishchee, was _always_ something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them 'for their own good' --not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
Pacifism is a shifty doctrin under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay--and claims a halo for his dishonesty.
But I was surprised to find an amazing and almost unanimous similarity in viewpoint on the part of the elderly rich and and elderly poor.\r\rMellowed and altruistic interests in the welfare and future of the whole community? Far from it! The elderly poor wanted $200 every month, or some other pension which would pay them more income than they ever earned while working, and they didn't give a hoot whast it did to the country! The elderly rich wanted the highest possible return from morgages. rents, dividends, or other investment incomes, and they didn't give a hoot what it did to the country.
That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed.
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