Favorite Quotes from Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for LoveandGerard K. O’Neill’sThe HighFrontier

“ No story teller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad universe.”

“All men are created unequal.”

An old person has had his nose rubbed in changes so many times that he knows it is a moving picture, forever changing.” “A young person sees the world as a still picture, immutable.

“‘Rights’ is a physical abstraction. No one has ‘rights’, neither machine Nor flesh-and-blood. Persons-both sorts- have opportunities, not rights, which they use, or do not use. “

“At the most we can suggest opportunities whose technical imperatives will make it easier for mankind to choose peace rather than war; diversity rather than repression. “

“A proposal to improve the human condition makes sense onlyif , in the long term, it has the potential to give all people, whatever their place of birth, access to the energy and materials needed for their progress.”

“Machines are human because they are made in our image. They share both our virtues and our faults—magnified.”

“Do not handicap your children by making their life easy.”

“The most soaring achievements of mankind in the arts, music and literature could have never occurred without a certain amount of leisure and wealth. We should not be ashamed to search for ways in which all of humankind can enjoy that wealth.”

“The settlement of space by humans could be carried out without ever exceeding the limits of the technology of this decade.”

“We have solved our problems by technical means for millennia, and it would be surprising indeed if we could change our character so completely as to abandon methods by which we have survived.”

“Work is not an end in itself. There must always be time enough for love.”

“Give the future enough thought to be ready for it—but don’t worry about it… face each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it joyously.”