The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of selflessness and service to the community in both voters and leaders.
Heinlein articulates a vision for a political system where leadership is earned through a demonstrated commitment to the collective good. By valuing individuals who prioritize community welfare over personal gain, he suggests that true democracy thrives when its participants possess a sense of duty and sacrifice, thus creating a more just and equitable society.
In practice
During a campaign speech emphasizing civic responsibility.
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.
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... after the war is on.
There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe.
I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?
There is no problem of human nature which is insoluble.
No reference is truly direct — every reference depends on some kind of coding scheme. It's just a question of how implicit it is.
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