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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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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
Selfishness
Starts
Conflict
Behavior
Bedrock
Higher
Imperative
Moral
Imperatives
Conflicts
Immoral

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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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One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
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The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.
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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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History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis.
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I'm afraid of coaching, of writer's classes, of writer's magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble - you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step.
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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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Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules about sex as on everything else they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.
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A zest for living must include a willingness to die.
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Television leaves no external scars.
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Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.
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Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.
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...a book need never die and should not be killed books were the immortal part of man.
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Anyone can see a forest fire. Skill lies in sniffing the first smoke.
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God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology.
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I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces - with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way government sticks its nose in everything, now.
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Specialization is for insects.
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Age does not bring wisdom... but it does give perspective... and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted.
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From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit.
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