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A very happy centennial birthday to the late great master of scifi, Robert Anson Heinlein!   Robert Anson Heinlein
7/7/1907—5/8/1988Heinlein 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 MistressA thanks for the reminder to Amy Sturgis from Liberty & Power. Check out her postTags: books, events, heinlein, history, holidays, people, quotes
Current Mood:  thoughtful
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For this Independence Day, I'd like to take a page from Roderick Long and point you all to Voltairine de Cleyre's insightful thoughts on the revolution. Think about the prophetic words of Thomas Jefferson, which she quotes: "The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." Does the spirit of '76 live on in the United States on this, its 230th birthday? Or have Americans lost their stomache for liberty entirely? The 4th is not a celebration of fireworks, or of flags, or of wars, or of men. It is fundamentally a celebration of ideals. On this day, our founders pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor" on the gamble that they might see freedom from England - and establish a nation on the principles of the Enlightenment. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were " self-evident truths," not merely nice goals, to be tossed aside when we are too lazy, afraid, or power-mad to keep them. A microcosm of the perverse nature of our current Congress is the closeness of the flag burning amendment to passing the Congress last week. By one vote! A vote to destroy the very ideals for which the flag stands, in honor of the flag! How hypocritical, or how misguided, for men whose bread and butter are platitudes built on the fathers of the Revolution? Those men cared not for flags, but for liberty. A flag is a symbol, and for Americans it is the symbol of that liberty - but it is the liberty also to destroy one's own property, no matter what its symbolism to others. Yet the people do not know this. They do not think about it, even; they merely get upset at the burning of their symbol, and cry out for the American judicial system to satisfy their anger. Not because of principle, not because of the ideals of the flag, but merely because they are angry. It is this that the Constitution tried to prevent, which it has failed to do. Realize today that the federal government is merely another group of men, just like yourselves. That it does not have the power to heal all wrongs, and that granting it more power will inevitably corrupt it further. Those radicals in 1781 and 1789 had the right idea in attempting to chain Leviathan. But it is up to us, not the Supreme Court or anyone else, to ensure that those chains remain strong. In that duty, Americans have been derelict. It is not too late, but it is a hard road back. And I fear there are few men or women left in this country. Jefferson said, also: "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion...What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure." Tags: culture, events, history, holidays, politics, rant
Current Mood: contemplative
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