A very happy centennial birthday to the late great master of scifi, Robert Anson Heinlein!

Robert Anson Heinlein
7/7/1907—5/8/1988

Heinlein is by far my favorite classical scifi author. What follows are some of my own favorite quotes - unfortunately, due to space constraints, I'll have to leave out basically the entirety of the Notebooks of Lazarus Long (click that link!), but you should get the picture.

"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 Heinlein (as Lazarus Long), Time Enough For Love

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." --Robert Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon

"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 effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure." --Robert Heinlein (as Professor Bernardo de la Paz), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

"I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman- which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Robert Heinlein (as Jubal Harshaw), Stranger in a Strange Land

"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...." --Robert Heinlein (as Jubal Harshaw), Stranger in a Strange Land

"No matter how lavishly overpaid, civil servants everywhere are convinced they are horribly underpaid-but all public employees have larceny in their hearts or they wouldn't be feeding at the public trough." --Robert Heinlein (as Friday), Friday

"'Love' is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." --Robert Heinlein (as Jubal Harshaw), Stranger in a Strange Land

And above all things...

TANSTAAFL!

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
A thanks for the reminder to Amy Sturgis from Liberty & Power. Check out her post

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