Roberta A. Hainlaina gudrības

Visu jau nevar salikt, tāpēc izlasīju, manuprāt, labākos.
Robert A. Heinlein, “Time Enough For Love”:

• Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.
• Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
• There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?
• If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
• Delusions are often functional. A mother’s opinions about her children’s beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
• A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.
• History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
• Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.
• No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and, in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.
• Of all the strange “crimes” that human beings have legislated out of nothing, “blasphemy”is the most amazing — with “obscenity” and “indecent exposure” fighting it out for second and third place.
• All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can—and must—be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is theonly universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “Women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly—and no doubt will keep on trying.
• All men are created unequal.
• A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.
• When the need arises — and it does — you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don’t farm it out — that doesn’t make it nicer, it makes it worse.
• One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.
• Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it’s more sanitary.
• Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
• Never appeal to a man’s “better nature.” He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
• You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.
• Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry. N.B.: Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead!
• Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
• An elephant. A mouse built to government specifications.
• Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”
• In a mature society, “civil servant” is semantically equal to “civilmaster.”
• When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away.
• A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.
• There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts arenot part of “Nature” — but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-fade absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred. In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong-an-emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women — it strikes me as a fine arrangement — and perfectly “natural”. Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnaturaI” and a “despoiling of Nature.”
• Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.
• Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides?
• Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat-driver syndrome.”
• What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are thefacts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
• Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death,
  there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
• Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)
• The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of “loyalty” and “duty.” Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute — get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.
• Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter bow “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
• Masturbation is cheap, clean, convenient, and free of any possibility of wrongdoing — and you don’t have to go home in the cold. But it’slonely.
• Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil. If tempted by something that feels “altruistic,” examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!
• The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive
  Industry in all history.
• The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.
• Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as yourpersona requires.
• If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I’ve never heard of it.
• A competent and self-confident personis incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
• You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.
• One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
• The phrase “we (I) (you) simply must—” designates something that need not be done. “That goes without saying” is a red warning. “Of course” means you had best check it yourself. These small-change clichés and others like them, when read correctly, are reliable channel markers.
• Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
• Rub her feet.
• Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.