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There is no such thing as luck there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

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
Thing
Statistical
Badass
Cope
Inadequate
Adequate
Preparation
Luck
Universe

More quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

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Those who refuse to support and defend the state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be considered murder in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be Using deadly weapons within city limits, or Creating a traffic hazard, or other misdemeanor.
Robert A. Heinlein
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War is not violence and killing, pure and simple war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing... but controlled and purposeful violence.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none men cannot live together without them.
Robert A. Heinlein
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A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
Robert A. Heinlein
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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
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I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults.
Robert A. Heinlein
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The stars incline, but do not impel.
Robert A. Heinlein
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In a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.
Robert A. Heinlein
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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.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Spacemen die if they stay in one place.
Robert A. Heinlein
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It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
Robert A. Heinlein
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'Savage' describes a cultural condition, not a degree of intelligence.
Robert A. Heinlein
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The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for art that leaves him unmoved--if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.
Robert A. Heinlein
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There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. A Libertarian Movement slogan - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, 1907.
Robert A. Heinlein
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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
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The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
Robert A. Heinlein
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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
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It was better to live with disappointment and frustration than to live without hope.
Robert A. Heinlein
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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.
Robert A. Heinlein