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.
Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.
Love of action is not industry.
If attachment is the conditioning factor, then non-attachment will become the unconditioning factor. If expectation leads you in misery, then non-expectation will lead you into non-misery. If anger creates a hell within you, then compassion will create a heaven. So whatsoever the process of misery, the reverse will be the process of happiness. Unconditioning means you have to understand the whole knotted phenomenon of human consciousness as it is.
Through therapy and a lot of thinking and writing my memoirs, I've been able to use my life as a lesson.
Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world.
Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.
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