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21 " Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist--a master--and that is what Auguste Rodin was--can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. "
― Robert A. Heinlein , Stranger in a Strange Land
22 " Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time. "
23 " Because the world has gone nutty and art always paints the spirit of its times "
24 " It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has. "
25 " Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That’s a law of nature, to be known henceforth as ‘Harshaw’s Law. "
26 " Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight. "
27 " All human behavior, all human motivations, all man’s hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind’s tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction. "
28 " Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it. "
29 " Customs, morals--is there a difference? "
30 " The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger. "
31 " Oh, you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay attention if it's free. "
32 " I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest. "
33 " Do you know your Bible?''Uh, not very well.''It merits study, it contains very practical advice for most emergencies. "
34 " English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. "
35 " …the greatest danger to man in space was man himself. "
36 " Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you. "
37 " Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is. "
38 " Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring. "
39 " Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling. "
40 " Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! "