Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.
Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Change is freedom, change is life.

It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed.

There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.”
― Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“Science is the only religion of mankind.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

“Now I understand,” said the last man.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“It's natural for a man to defend what's dear to him: his own life, his home, his family. But in order to make him fight on behalf of his rulers, the rich and powerful who are too cunning to fight their own battles-in short to defend not himself but people whom he's never met and moreover would not care to be in the same room with him-you have to condition him into loving violence not for the benefits it bestows on him but for its own sake. Result: the society has to defend itself from its defenders, because what's admirable in wartime is termed psychopathic in peace. It's easier to wreck a man than to repair him. Ask any psychotherapist. And take a look at the crime figures among veterans.”
― John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar

“...a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham's Freehold

“Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star

“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!”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star

“I am not a pacifist. Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay—and claims a halo for his dishonesty.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star

“That the makers of laws are the majority who are weak; and they make laws and distribute praises and censures with a view to themselves and to their own interests.”
― Plato, Gorgias