Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough For Love

Beware of the "Black Swan" fallacy. Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you—with perfect logic. The designers of the earliest computers called this the "GIGO Law," i.e., "Garbage in, garbage out." Inductive logic is much more difficult—but can produce new truths.

A dozen Heinlein quotations for sci fi day

Robert A. Heinlein (writing about Stranger In A Strange Land)

I was asking questions. I was not giving answers. I was trying to shake the reader loose from some preconceptions and induce him to think for himself, along new and fresh lines. In consequence, each reader gets something different out of that book because he himself supplies the answers. If I managed to shake him loose from some prejudice, preconception, or unexamined assumption, that was all I intended to do. A rational human being does not need answers, spoon fed to him on "faith," he needs questions to worry over—serious ones. The quality of the answers then depends on him... But anyone who takes that book as answers is cheating himself. It is an invitation to think—not to believe.

A dozen Heinlein quotations for sci fi day

Robert A. Heinlein - Lost Legacy

When I was a young student, I thought modern psychology could tell me the answers, but I soon found out that the best psychologists didn’t know a damn thing about the real core of the matter. Oh, I am not disparaging the work that has been done; it was badly needed and had been very useful in its way. None of ’em know what life is, what thought is, whether free will is a reality or an illusion, or whether that last question means anything. The best of ’em admit their ignorance; the worst of them make dogmatic assertions that are obvious absurdities.

A dozen Heinlein quotations for sci fi day

Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough For Love

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.

A dozen Heinlein quotations for sci fi day

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

We have to re-humanise the people whose death has been normalised.

@middleeasteye

“We have to re-humanise the people whose death has been normalised.” Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discussed her decision to use the term "genocide" in Congress when describing Israel's actions in Gaza during an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Ocasio-Cortez said that Israel's military operations in Gaza were also endangering the lives of its own hostages who are also at risk of death due to the Israeli manufactured famine.

♬ original sound - Middle East Eye

George Bernard Shaw

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

"Jass and Jassism" [article] - New Orleans Times-Picayune, 1918

[jazz is the] brotherhood of those who, devoid of harmonic and even of melodic instinct, love to fairly wallow in noise. [it is a] manifestation of a low streak in man's tastes that has not yet come out in civilization's wash.

Mark Twain

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

Robert Rauschenberg

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

Rev. Benjamin Cremer

Beware of any Christian movement that demands the government be an instrument of God’s wrath but never a source of God’s mercy, generosity, or compassion.

Those people are so tangled up in mental health issues and propaganda that they don't know up from down. You'd think reading the Bible would bring them some peace... but that's the thing about books, you have to read them.

Sylvia Pankhurst

I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving.

Happy International Women's Day!✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/2lUB6wSEhW

— Enemy of the State 🏴 (@egceots) March 9, 2024

Philip J. Corso

Let there be no doubt. Alien technology harvested from the infamous saucer crash in Roswell, N.Mex., in July 1947 led directly to the development of the integrated circuit chip, laser and fiber optic technologies, Particle beams, Electromagnetic propulsion systems, Depleted uranium projectiles, Stealth capabilities, and many others! How do I know? I was in charge! A matter of public record I think the kids on this planet are wise to the truth, and I think we ought to give it to them. I think they deserve it.

Robert A. Heinlein - Gulf

If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two-valued, 'either-or' logic to arrive at his wrong answers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personally interested in the answer, he can't use any sort of logic and will discard an observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental proccess as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.

A dozen Heinlein quotations for sci fi day

Robert A. Heinlein - Friday

My grandparents used to tell me about a time when people were polite and nobody hesitated to be outdoors at night and people often didn't even lock their doors-much less surround their homes with fences and walls and barbed wire and lasers. Maybe so; I'm not old enough to remember it. It seems to me that, all my life, things have grown worse and worse.

A dozen Heinlein quotations for sci fi day

Robert A. Heinlein - Revolt in 2100, Postscript

The capacity for the human mind for swalling nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

A dozen Heinlein quotations for sci fi day