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Being generous is inborn being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance --

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
Altruistic
Inborn
Perversity
Resemblance
Generous
Learned

More quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

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Budget the luxuries first.
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Behind every mystery lies another mystery.
Robert A. Heinlein
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In this complex world, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Faith is intellectual laziness.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don't walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don't know how to describe it, but it's much more complex and utterly delightful. They don't move just their feet everything moves and in different directions . . . and all of it graceful.
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Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.
Robert A. Heinlein
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There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
Robert A. Heinlein
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He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power.
Robert A. Heinlein
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My old man taught me two things: 'Mind own business' and 'Always cut cards.'
Robert A. Heinlein
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Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
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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Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it - especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Never pick up a stray kitten . . . unless you've already made up your mind to be owned by it.
Robert A. Heinlein
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A family reunion is an effective form of birth control.
Robert A. Heinlein
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What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'.
Robert A. Heinlein
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I don't know Who is cranking I'm pleased He doesn't stop.
Robert A. Heinlein
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You got the impression that he never needed to sleep - just ten-thousand-mile checkups and dust him off occasionally.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can't have what you've got coming to you the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don't rate it.
Robert A. Heinlein
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Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything - you can't conquer a free man the most you can do is kill him.
Robert A. Heinlein