Robert Anson Heinlein citáty

page 16

„Ženy a mačky si vždy budú robiť, čo sa im zachce. A mužom a psom ostáva iba upokojiť sa a zvyknúť si na to.“

„Nikdy sa nesnažte prekabátiť mačku.“

„Neznehodnocujte svoje deti tým, že im uľahčíte život.“

„Nikdy sa nepokúšajte naučiť prasa spievať; strácate tým čas a prasa to otravuje.“

„Puritán je človek, ktorý si myslí, že jeho vlastné pravidlá slušnosti sú prirodzené zákony.“

„Nič nie je zadarmo.“

„Šťastie spočíva v dostatočnom množstve spánku. Len v tom, v ničom inom.“

„Môžeš mať mier alebo môžeš mať slobodu. Ale nerátaj s tým, že budeš mať oba naraz.“

„Niet horšej tyranie ako prinútiť človeka zaplatiť za niečo, čo nechce, len preto, že si myslíte, že by to bolo pre neho dobré.“

„Pripisovali ste darebáctvu podmienky, ktoré jednoducho vyplývajú z hlúposti.“

„Hriech spočíva len v tom, že zbytočne ubližujeme iným ľuďom. Všetky ostatné "hriechy" sú vymyslené nezmysly. Ubližovanie sebe samému nie je hriech - len hlúposť.“

“The point is, your request for a lawyer comes about two hundred years too late to be meaningful. The verbalisms lag behind the facts. Nevertheless, you shall have a lawyer—or a lollipop, whichever you prefer, after I am through questioning you. If I were you, I’d take the lollipop. More nourishing.”

“There is one thing no head of a country can know, and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him.”

“Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy.”

“Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good.”

“Acronym for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." The origin of this phrase is often misattributed to Heinlein or Milton Friedman, but it actually dates back to at least the 1930s. Heinlein's contribution was to make the acronym for it.”

“The situation has multifarious ramifications not immediately apparent to the unassisted optic.”

“‘Magic,’” I stated, “is a symbol for any process not understood.”

“It is better to be a lively frump than a stylish corpse.”

“I said, “What do you think about it, Paul?”
The boss smiled gently. “I don’t. I haven’t enough data.””

“When had a slave religion proved anything but an aid to the conqueror? Slaves needed a wailing wall; they went into their temples, prayed to their gods to deliver them from oppression, and came out to work in the fields and factories, relaxed and made harmless by the emotional catharsis of prayer.”

“Random numbers are to a computer what free will is to a human being.”

“When a fact came along, he junked theories that failed to match.”

““Thanks, awfully,” said Thomas. “Now… uh… what do I owe you for this?”
Finney’s reaction made him feel as if he had uttered some indecency. “Don’t mention payment, my son! Money is wrong—it’s the means whereby man enslaves his brother.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Thomas apologized sincerely. “Nevertheless, I wish there were some way for me to do something for you.”
“That is another matter. Help your brother when you can, and help will come to you when you need it.””

“Fighting continued on a token basis, and the dead did not complain.”

“Wong shook his head sadly. “I sometimes think that modern education is deliberately designed to handicap a boy.””

“The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."”

“Marriage is not ownership and wives are not property.”

“No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other — but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.”

“Jim?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“What’s this about leaving your gun where the baby could reach it?”
Jim flushed. “It wasn’t charged, Dad.”
“If all the people who had been killed with unloaded guns were laid end to end it would make quite a line up. You are proud of being a licensed gun wearer, aren’t you?
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“And I’m proud to have you be one. It means you are a responsible, trusted adult. But when I sponsored you before the Council and stood up with you when you took your oath, I guaranteed that you would obey the regulations and follow the code, wholeheartedly and all the time—not just most of the time. Understand me?”

“I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea.”

“It didn’t happen that way,” Roger Stone cut in, “so there is no use talking about other possibilities. They probably aren’t really possibilities at all, if only we understood it.”
Pollux: “Predestination.”
Castor: “Very shaky theory.”
Roger grinned. “I’m not a determinist and you can’t get my goat. I believe in free will.”
Pollux: “Another very shaky theory.”
“Make up your minds,” their father told them. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“Why not?” asked Hazel. “Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.”
“Not mathematical,” objected Pollux.
Castor nodded. “Just poetry.”

“He gave up and went back to loafing, found that he could sleep all right in the afternoons but that the practice kept him awake at night.”

“McIlvaine continued, “Take the amoeba—a more basic, and much more successful life form than than ours. The motivational psychology of the amoeba—”
I switched off my ears; free speech gives a man the right to talk about the “psychology” of an amoeba, but I don’t have to listen.”

“Doc says the Company set-up is just one big happy family, and the idea that it is a non-profit corporation is the biggest joke since women were invented.”

“Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me—death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way.”

“The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy.”

“The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance.”

“I looked it up later; he was right. Dad is an absolute mine of useless information. He says a fact should be loved for itself alone.”

“The door dilated.”