www.thornwalker.com/ditch/olson_heinlein.htm
November 2, 2020
Robert A. Heinlein:
Forgotten successor to
By DOUGLAS OLSON
WHILE SEARCHING OUT a quote on the internet recently for a proudly subversive project, I ran across a website that contains an apparently unending list of ponderable quotes by Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988), an aeronautical engineer and naval officer who is mostly remembered as a science-fiction author, but was more truly a philosopher.
Before I found the quote I needed, I ran across sixteen others so good that I had to copy and paste them into a document that I could save for later integration into my extensive collection of quotes on all subjects. After finding it, I copied and saved nearly a hundred altogether — and I did not get through a quarter of those on the site before having to leave for more essential duties. Within the space of half an hour, Heinlein began to rival my favorite quotemeister, the wonderful H.L. Mencken.
The quote I was seeking, the one that instigated all this serendipity, was:
"You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic."
Revolt in 2100 / Methuselah's Children
Following are some of the best of the others I found that day, and which I think will have special appeal to denizens of The Last Ditch. Where no novel title is cited, the site did not specify the source and I am too lazy to try and find it.
"The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket."
***
"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."
***
"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."
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."
Beyond This Horizon
***
"A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future."
Time Enough for Love
***
"You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."
The Green Hills of Earth
***
"Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."
***
"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."
***
"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."
***
"Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy."
***
"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."
***
"Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong."
Double Star
***
"Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers."
Stranger in a Strange Land
***
"Does history record any case in which the majority was right?"
***
"Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin."
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
***
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.'"
***
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
Time Enough for Love
***
"To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster."
Starship Troopers
***
"I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest."
Stranger in a Strange Land
***
"Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling."
Stranger in a Strange Land
***
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
***
"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."
Starship Troopers
***
"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!"
***
"No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority."
***
"A managed democracy is a wonderful thing ... for the managers ... and its greatest strength is a 'free press' when 'free' is defined as 'responsible' and the managers define what is 'irresponsible.'"
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
***
"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."
***
"Support for the arts — merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!"
Stranger in a Strange Land
***
"Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.'"
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
***
"A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!"
Double Star
***
"Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?"
***
"I never learned from a man who agreed with me."
***
"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 their freedoms."
Starship Troopers
***
"The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness."
***
"Every general prohibition creates its bootleggers."
Time Enough for Love
***
"History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of."
Time Enough for Love
***
"Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse — and without examining evidence which their 'common sense' told them was impossible."
Stranger in a Strange Land
***
"Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden."
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
***
"A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it — it keeps him upright."
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
***
"The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak."
***
"A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws."
And, finally, as an obvious echo of Oscar Wilde: "Yield to temptation ... it may not pass your way again!" Ω
November 2, 2020
© 2020 Douglas Olson
Published in 2020 by WTM
Enterprises.
Notice to visitors who came straight to this document from off site: You are deep in The Last Ditch. Please check out our home page and table of contents.