“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.”

— Robert A. Heinlein , book The Rolling Stones

“And not very good poetry.”
Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 14, “Flat Cats Factorial” (p. 182)

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Robert A. Heinlein 557

American science fiction author 1907–1988

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