Home > Work > The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
1 " Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. "
― Robert A. Heinlein , The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
2 " Women talk when they want to. Or don't. "
3 " Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument. "
4 " I'm too much old-timer to be rude to a woman no matter what - they have so much of what we have none of. "
5 " I waited. Women talk when they want to. Or don't. "
6 " There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. "
7 " Can a machine be so frightened and hurt that it will go into catatonia and refuse to respond? While ego crouches inside, aware but never willing to risk it? No, can’t be that; Mike was unafraid – as gaily unafraid as Prof. "
8 " I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. 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. "
9 " Women are amazing creatures-sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are. "
10 " A managed democracy is a wonderful thing... for the managers... and its greatest strength is a 'free press' when 'free' is defined as 'responsible' and the managers define what is 'irresponsible'. "
11 " Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds. "
12 " Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant. "
13 " From somewhere, back in my youth, heard Prof say, 'Manuel, when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.' He had been teaching me something he himself did not understand very well—something in math—but had taught me something far more important, a basic principle. "
14 " One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed. "
15 " Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory. "
16 " Certain types of loudmouthism should be a capital offense among decent people. "
17 " In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts. "
18 " As it says in the Bible, God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery. "
19 " Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. 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" — not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it. "
20 " Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden. "