Robert A. Heinlein cytaty

strona 9

„Nie tłumaczcie komputerów laikom. Prościej wytłumaczyć seks dziewicy.”

„Istota ludzka powinna umieć zmieniać pieluszki, zaplanować inwazję, zarżnąć wieprza, sterować statkiem, zaprojektować budynek, napisać sonet, prowadzić księgę rachunkową, zbudować mur, nastawić złamanie, pocieszyć umierającego, dawać rozkazy, przyjmować rozkazy, działać w grupie, działać samemu, rozwiązywać równania, analizować nowe problemy, roztrząsać nawóz, zaprogramować komputer, ugotować smaczny posiłek, walczyć skutecznie, umrzeć bohatersko. Specjalizacja jest dla insektów.”

„Nigdy nie odwołuj się do lepszej natury człowieka – być może wcale jej nie ma. Zawsze podkreślaj, że masz na względzie jego interes.”

„Demokracja to cztery wilki i owca, głosujące o obiedzie.”

„Demokracja nie może się sprawdzić. Wszędzie są matematycy, wieśniacy i zwierzęta – tak więc demokracja, teoria oparta na założeniu, że matematycy i wieśniacy są równi, nigdy się nie sprawdza. Mądrości nie można sumować – jej maksimum mierzy się mądrością najbystrzejszego członka danej grupy.”

„Na pewno nigdy nie znajdziecie wroga w matce, jeśli w porę pochwalicie jej dziecko.”

„Pokolenie, które ignoruje historię, nie ma przeszłości – ani przyszłości.”

„Komitet to stworzenie o 3 lub więcej nogach i bez mózgu.”

„Bądź czujna, dopóki nie wiesz, którędy uciekać.”

“Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the past with less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on the spot.”

“Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.”

“Gravity’s books have got to balance.”

“Sometimes I think,” he told Tex, “that Th’Wing thinks that I am an idiot studying hard to become a moron—but flunking the course.”

“I had taken a partner once before—but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.”

“Don’t pay any attention to what she says. Half of it’s always wrong and she doesn’t mean the rest.”

“Babies are fun. And they’re not much trouble. Feed ‘em occasionally, help them when they need it, and love them a lot. That’s all there is to it.”

“Son, suppose you tend to your knitting and I tend to mine.”

“Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers.”

“I think the major problem in growing up is to become sophisticated without becoming cynical.”

“My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.”

“Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.”

“Never encourage a man to cook breakfast; it causes him to wonder if women are necessary. If you always get his breakfast and don’t raise controversial issues until after his second cup of coffee, you can get away with murder the rest of the time. They don’t notice other odors when they smell bacon.”

“The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.”

“By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget—especially those who ought to know better, such as yourself—that while the laws of statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just as firmly that coincidences do happen.”

“He considered horoscopes as silly as spectacles on a cow.”

“The Almighty-God idea came under attack because it explained nothing; it simply pushed all explanations one stage farther away. In the nineteenth century atheistic positivism started displacing the Almighty-God notion in that minority of the population that bathed regularly. Atheism had a limited run, as it, too, explains nothing, being merely Godism turned upside down.”

“Never listen to newscasts. Saves wear and tear on the nervous system.”

“Everybody has a skeleton in the closet; the thing is to keep ’em there and not at the feast.”

“Like searching at midnight in a dark cellar for a black cat that isn’t there.”

“Mercifully, we stay our hand. Earth’s cities will not be bombed. The free citizens of Venus Republic have no wish to slaughter their cousins still on Terra. Our only purpose is to establish our own independence, to manage our own affairs, to throw off the crushing yoke of absentee ownership and taxation without representation which has bleed us poor.
In doing so, in so taking our stand as free men, we call on all oppressed and impoverished nations everywhere to follow our lead, accept our help. Look up into the sky! Swimming there above you is the very station from which I now address you. The fat and stupid rulers of the Federation have made of Circum-Terra an overseer’s whip. The threat of this military base in the sky has protected their empire from the just wrath of their victims for more then five score years.
We now crush it.
In a matter of minutes this scandal in the clean skies, this pistol pointed at the heads of men everywhere on your planet, will cease to exist. Step out of doors, watch the sky. Watch a new sun blaze briefly, and know that its light is the light of Liberty inviting all of Earth to free itself.
Subject peoples of Earth, we free men of the free Republic of Venus salute you with that sign!”

“Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.”

“I knew that the stupidest students, the silliest professors, and the worst bull courses are concentrated in schools of education.”

“One can’t expect logic from males; they think with their testicles and act from their emotions.”

“He decided to stay in his space suit; explosive decompression didn’t appeal to him. Come to think about it, death from old age was his choice.”

“In the army it takes an eight-man working party to help a brass hat blow his nose.”

“You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me — Jane — here alone in the dark.
I miss you dreadfully!”

“The matter was still "Top Secret" and the subject of cabinet debates at the time of the Scranton Riot. Don't ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough boys and girls to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I've read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don't know; it sounds Utopian.”

“Mr. Stone was satisfied, being sure in his heart that any person skilled with mathematical tools could learn anything else he needed to know, with or without a master.”