Some years ago I had a fire that wiped out all my columns I had scanned into my then computer and floppy disks. I still have the actual hardcopy of the newspapers on the days my columns ran and if my spirit ever gets high enough some day, I’ll go to that back Fibber McGee closet and try to find the one on Bob.
So, here are few of my favorite quotes of his:
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future. (Way too damned true nowadays!)
Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.
One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again too. Who decides?
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in the long run no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it contains until it destroys.
The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance. (This was written some 30 years before Michael Vick every owned a dog...)
Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius. (I suspect some of ya'll here on FR call me lucky, but I'll not want it engraved on a tombstone till I die! };^b)
Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forgot this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and there freedoms.
And lastly from Citizen of the Galaxy written before the electron microscope was commonplace: “Nobody has ever seen an electron. Nor a thought. You can’t see a thought, you can’t measure, weigh, nor taste it- but thoughts are the most real things in the Galaxy.”
Amen, Bob... Amen!
My favorite quotation:
Piling up facts is not science--science is facts-and-theories. Facts alone have limited use and lack meaning: a valid theory organizes them into far greater usefulness.
A powerful theory not only embraces old facts and new but also discloses unsuspected facts.
Expanded Universe: The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein, 1980, pp. 480-481
"Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits."
"It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired."
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." (Maybe my personal favorite)
"This sad little lizard tol me he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply."
There are many more, but these are some of my favorites.
Excellent quotes!! :)