Christopher E > Christopher E's Quotes

“Your neighbors are not all sheep. Your political opponents are not all evil or fools. Try talking to those you despise. They are your fellow citizens. And together, we are not lesser than any "greatest generation.".”
― David Brin

“There is in certain living souls a quality of loneliness unspeakable, so great it must be shared as company is shared by lesser beings. Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this that in immensity there is one lonelier than you.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, E Pluribus Unicorn

“90% of everything is crap.”
― Theodore Sturgeon

“Ask the next question.”
― Theodore Sturgeon

“No man can rob successfully over a period of years without pleasing the people he robs.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume II: Microcosmic God

“Nothing is always absolutely so”
― Theodore Sturgeon

“Love’s a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
― Robert Heinlein

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth

“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
― Robert Heinlein

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Pierre Dos Utt, Tanstaafl: A Plan for a New Economic World Order

“Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“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.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

“I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”
― Robert A Heinlein

“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
― Robert J. Hanlon

“A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“You don’t pay back, you pay forward.”
― Robert A. Heinlein