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Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Robert A. Heinlein
Age: 80 †
Born: 1907
Born: July 7
Died: 1988
Died: May 8
Essayist
Literary Critic
Naval Officer
Novelist
Prosaist
Science Fiction Writer
Science Writer
Screenwriter
Stonemason
Writer
Butler
Missouri
Robert Anson Heinlein
Anson MacDonald
Lyle Monroe
John Riverside
Caleb Saunders
Simon York
Must
Level
Tribe
Men
Higher
Tribes
Levels
Virtues
Virtue
Devotion
Imagination
Forced
Responsibility
Loyalty
Family
Requires
Social
Develop
Vomit
More quotes by Robert A. Heinlein
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who love Nature while deploring the artificialities with which Man has spoiled Nature.' The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of Nature : but beavers and their dams are.
Robert A. Heinlein
His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.
Robert A. Heinlein
Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional you have to let them know who’s boss.
Robert A. Heinlein
From somewhere, back in my youth, heard Prof say, 'Manuel, when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.' He had been teaching me something he himself did not understand very well—something in math—but had taught me something far more important, a basic principle.
Robert A. Heinlein
Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.
Robert A. Heinlein
I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics.
Robert A. Heinlein
You can't conquer a free man the most you can do is kill him.
Robert A. Heinlein
From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit.
Robert A. Heinlein
One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed.
Robert A. Heinlein
Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense.
Robert A. Heinlein
There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.
Robert A. Heinlein
Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.
Robert A. Heinlein
A fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Robert A. Heinlein
Small change can often be found under seat cushions.
Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Robert A. Heinlein
If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people. -- Lazarus Long.
Robert A. Heinlein
There is solemn satisfaction in doing the best you can for eight billion people. Perhaps their lives have no cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt.
Robert A. Heinlein
It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws.
Robert A. Heinlein
Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
Robert A. Heinlein
I think that science fiction has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea.
Robert A. Heinlein