The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
Do this. Don't do that. Stay back in line. Where's tax receipt? Fill out form. Let's see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead— but first get permit.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the absurdity and strictness of societal rules and bureaucratic systems.
Heinlein's quote critiques the excessive regulations and red tape that often define our interactions with institutions. It portrays the frustrations of navigating a world dominated by rules that seem to serve more as obstacles than guidance, emphasizing how these limitations can stifle individuality and freedom. The vivid and somewhat humorous wording conveys a sense of exasperation with a system that prioritizes order over common sense.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the challenges of navigating modern bureaucracy.
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.
Let my thoughts come to you, when I am gone, like the afterglow of sunset at the margin of starry silence.
At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.
I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.
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