SubscribeRobert A. Heinlein Love Quotes and Famous Sayings
Posted on Oct 05, 2008 under American Science Fiction Writer, Dean of Science Fiction Writer, Grand Master Award, Hugo Awards, R, Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land | No Comment1. Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
2. May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
3. Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often confuses one for the other, or assumes the greater the love, the greater the jealousy. In fact they are almost incompatible; both at once produce unbearable turmoil.
4. The more you love, the more you can love — and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.
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Excerpt from Wikipedia: Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. Often called “the dean of science fiction writers“, he was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of the genre. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre’s standards of literary quality. He was one of the first writers to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era. For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the “Big Three” of science fiction.
Heinlein was a notable writer of science-fiction short stories, and he was one of a group of writers who were groomed in their writing by John W. Campbell, Jr. the editor of Astounding magazine – notwithstanding that Heinlein himself had denied Campbell having influenced his writing in any great degree.
Within the framework of his science fiction stories, Heinlein repeatedly integrated recognizable social themes: The importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress non-conformist thought. He also examined the relationship between physical and emotional love, explored various unorthodox family structures, and speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. His iconoclastic approach to these themes led to wildly divergent perceptions of his works and attempts to place mutually contradictory labels on his work. For example, his 1959 novel Starship Troopers was regarded by some as advocating militarism and to some extent fascism, although many passages in the book disparage the inflexibility and stupidity of a purely militaristic mindset. By contrast, his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land put him in the unexpected role of a pied piper of the sexual revolution, and of the counterculture, and through this book he was credited with popularizing the notion of polyamory.
Heinlein won Hugo Awards for four of his novels; in addition, fifty years after publication, three of his works were awarded “Retro Hugos” – awards given retrospectively for years in which Hugo Awards had not been awarded. He also won the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for his lifetime achievement. In his fiction, Heinlein coined words that have become part of the English language, including “grok” and “waldo”, and popularized the term “TANSTAAFL” (Acronym for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch“).
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Famous Sayings from Robert A. Heinlein
1. A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
2. Don’t ever become a pessimist… a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
3. Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.
4. Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
5. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
6. I never learned from a man who agreed with me.
7. No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
8. One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
9. The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
10. Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
11. A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.
12. Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.
13. Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.
14. Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense.
