Heinlein Never Gets Enough Credit

[clubsoda22]

I don't think Robert Heinlein gets enough credit. Everyone quotes Jeff Cooper, but Heinlein deserves at least equal credit, despite being a science ficton writer and not a gunfighter. This guy is awesome.


Quotes:


"Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your
second shot perfect."

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."

"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss."

"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom."

"...I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals... I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose."

"The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness."

"There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men."

"Love your country, but never trust its government."

"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least to be cheap and is never free of cost."

"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."

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."

"Never insult anyone by accident."

"No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority."

"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid)."

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

 

[Browns Fan]

Interesting quotes... I believe that there are a few folks on this board who agree with you, judging by their signature.

 

[Oracle]

Yep, RAH is awesome.

 

[BryanP]

If you want to read some of his essays and non-fiction (mixed in with some of his short stories) I highly recommend Expanded Universe . Besides the newly reprinted hardcover there are plenty of older paperback editions available used.

 

[Amish_Bill]

He's one that I read a lot of when I was younger. He definitely has some good thoughts.

 

[tommytrauma]

New Heinlein novel coming out

A previously unpublished manuscript has been discovered, and is due for release very soon.

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/news/newsFUTL.html

 

[El Tejon]

TANSTAAFL.

 

[Chuck Dye]

Everyone?

Much of what is attributed to Cooper, Heinlein, and many, many others, can be found in the writings of and about still others. If it is true about people and society at one point in history, is has almost certainly been observed by someone decades, centuries, or millennia earlier.

It is not just the first liar who doesen't stand a chance.

 

[FPrice]

tommytrauma...

"A previously unpublished manuscript has been discovered, and is due for release very soon."

I find this very interesting, but am mildly skeptical. I am a fan of Heinlein's although not an expert by any means. The description, that is it "racy" leaves me wondering. Heinlein became very liberal and racy at the end of his writing career, but his early novels were anything but. It is certainly possible that he had an early novel which was such, but then hid this side of his writings until it became more socially acceptable. I will await publication and see how it turns out.

Oh, yes, thanks for the info.

 

[Greg L]

TT,

Thanks for the information, you just made my Christmas shopping much easier (Amazon makes things very easy).

RAH is one of both my wife & my favorite authors. While we were dating we would spend many an afternoon curled up on the couch reading his stories. Right now my kids are working their way through his juvenile novels.

Greg

 

[RTFM]

"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."

Sums my attitude about life in a nut shell. I have never read that quote before. Thanks.

RTFM

 

[BryanP]

The description, that is it "racy" leaves me wondering. Heinlein became very liberal and racy at the end of his writing career,

He never had a problem with writing about sex, but was constrained from doing so by editors in many cases. He had a great sense of humor about it. One of my favorite anecdotes about the man involves how he managed to sneak a moderately obscure dirty joke in to "The Star Beast", one of his "juvenile" novels, and get it past the editor who didn't like him and was something of a prude.


If you haven't read The Star Beast and want to try to figure it out for yourself skip the next paragraph.








As anyone who read it will remember, the story is told from the POV of a young man named Johnathan Thomas, whose father and grandfather had the same name. They had a very long-lived alien creature as a pet, the aforementioned Star Beast. Late in the book you find out that the pet is highly intelligent and in fact has considered the series of young men (our hero, his father, his grandfather, etc..) to be her pets. In other words her hobby was raising John Thomases.

 

[cordex]

If you get the new Heinlein, read the intro.

Don't think of it as a novel, but rather a soapbox. The characters are just there to introduce subjects and allow him to explain things.

Not a bad book, but nowhere near the literary quality of his other works. Bits and pieces of many other Heinlein are scattered throughout.

I'm enjoying it.

 

[cma g21]

Ditto to what cordex said. The book (For Us, The Living) was never published in his lifetime, but Heinlein used many of the ideas in it for his later stories.

Well worth reading.

 

[Jim March]

All that, plus he invented the waterbed .

 

[dfariswheel]

My favorite quote:

Never make trouble for a little man. You'll frighten him.......and he'll kill you.

 

[F4GIB]

Give yourself a great Holiday gift.

Get a copy of The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
ISBN0-87654-473-I