The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.
Interpretation
Success depends on our ability to make informed choices with limited information.
This quote highlights the importance of intuition and decision-making in navigating life's uncertainties. It suggests that to achieve our goals or simply to survive, we often rely on our ability to make educated guesses repeatedly, especially when faced with incomplete data.
In practice
In a graduation speech about the uncertainties of the future.
The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
An armed society is a polite society.
Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.
Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
What you end up seeing when you look at history is that people who have been good at pushing the boundaries of possibility, and exploring those frontiers of good ideas and innovations, have rarely done it in moments of great inspiration. They don't just have a brilliant breakthrough idea out of nowhere and leap ahead of everyone else.
She likes the people with the endurance to tolerate the drudge, the ones who know that pain is a requirement, not a curse.
I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.
Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
To develop and perfect and arm conscience is the great achievement of history.
Knowledge is one thing, virtue is another.
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