Robert A. Heinlein · 276 pages
Rating: (22.9K votes)
“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”
“Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.”
“Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them. ”
“We’re simply trying to survive—and the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible and concentrate on what’s possible.”
“Many problems can be solved by a man not frightened by them.”
“But when I see a black widow, I step on it; I don’t plead with it to be a good little spider and please stop poisoning people.”
“The best things in history are accomplished by people who get tired of being shoved around.”
“good luck’ follows careful preparation; ‘bad luck’ comes from sloppiness.”
“Getting a problem analyzed is two-thirds of solving it.”
“contrary to some opinions, it is better to be a dead hero than a live louse. Dying is messy and inconvenient but even a louse dies someday no matter what he will do to stay alive and he is forever having to explain his choice.”
“To die trying is the proudest humans thing.”
“I wonder how harmless such people are? To what extent civilization is retarded by the laughing jackasses, the empty-minded belittlers?”
“There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”
“Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.”
“I needed a space suit the way a pig needs a pipe organ.”
“I had never been much interested in Pluto, too many facts and too much isolation.”
“Some people insist that ‘mediocre’ is better than ‘best.’ They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can’t fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!”
“When you read about chemistry and physics, you want to do them too.”
“Mother had the social restraint of an ambassador.”
“More depended on the student than on the school.”
“Everybody else specializes. Daddy knows everything, and he puts the pieces together.”
“The Mother Thing makes our world.”
“You can't believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside.”
“Library science was the foundation of all sciences.”
“Dress yourself in heavy fishing waders, put on an overcoat and boxing gloves and a bucket over your head, then have somebody strap two sacks of cement across your shoulders and you will know what a space suit feels like under one gravity.”
“Find out what you want to do, then do it. Never talk yourself into doing something you don’t want. Think”
“You can’t say you know a city unless you know three ways to everywhere.”
“It’s the correct thing to say that a man needs no more than six feet of earth. But six feet is what a corpse needs, not a man. And they say, too, now, that if our intellectual classes are attracted to the land and yearn for a farm, it’s a good thing. But these farms are just the same as six feet of earth. To retreat from town, from the struggle, from the bustle of life, to retreat and bury oneself in one’s farm—it’s not life, it’s egoism, laziness, it’s monasticism of a sort, but monasticism without good works. A man does not need six feet of earth or a farm, but the whole globe, all nature, where he can have room to display all the qualities and peculiarities of his free spirit.”
“When I asked him what he was planning to do in Canada, he didn’t have an answer. “I don’t care about myself anymore. I’ll go and clean the floors there. All I care about now is the future of my children.”
“We can’t go backward. There are too many regrets. Please just move forward with me?”
“The average man don't like trouble and danger.”
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