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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

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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
Harder
Littles
Little
Things
Electrons
Timid
Boss

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An armed man need not fight.
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If I had a Boy Scout I could make a fire by rubbing his hind legs together.
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...I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals... I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose.
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Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
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Damnit! Nationalism should stop at the stratosphere!
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Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you if you don't bet you can't win.
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You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but--if you will pardon my saying so--all wrong.
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Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive.
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Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.
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Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
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Death is an old friend I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him to meet him again does not frighten me death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way.
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The future is better than the past. Despite the crepe hangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands ... with tools ... with horse sense and science and engineering.
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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!
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Most women are damn fools and children. But they've got more range than we've got. The brave ones are braver, the good ones are better - and the vile ones are viler, for that matter.
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Violence never settles anything should be debated by the ghosts of Hitler and Stalin, with the city fathers of Carthage as referees.
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Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat driver” syndrome.
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My vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free.
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Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything.
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A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.
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