“Nineteen-year-old Ray Bradbury was rambunctious and so energetic that it made Leslyn tired to be in the same room with him; it was too much like having to manage a large and unruly puppy””
“A smart man learns from experience; a wise man learns from the experience of others.””
“One is the notion that knowledge is worth acquiring, all knowledge, and that a solid grounding in mathematics provides one with the essential language of many of the most important forms of knowledge. The third theme is that, while it is desirable to live peaceably, there are things worth fighting for and values worth dying for”
“I suggest that it never helps anyone to tell a mother that her baby is ugly.””
“a logical man must behave in a crisis as if his calculated risk were indeed a certainty …””
“My brother, Major General Lawrence Heinlein, once told me that there are only two promotions in life that mean a damn: from buck private to corporal, and from colonel to general officer. I made corporal decades ago … but now at long last I know what he meant about the other. Thank you.17””
Robert Patterson (January 12, 1792 – August 7, 1881) was an Irish-born American military officer who served in the United States Army during the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War and the Civil War...
“Treat people magnanimously if you can,” he said, “It’ll make you feel better. Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed. Do the decent thing if you can, but for its own sake.””
“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.””
“In this ultimate sense Taft had fallen out of step with his times. Too much himself to soften his profile, he happened on the national scene at the same time that Franklin D. Roosevelt was demonstrating the magic to be wrung from the mass media. Myopic and somewhat disdainful about “image,” he struggled to prominence just as public opinion polling developed into a powerful tool for his opponents. Instinctively partisan, he tried for the presidency after the depression had helped the Democrats build an electoral coalition that forced Republicans to turn to Dewey and even to such unpartisan figures as Willkie and Eisenhower. Fearful of commitments abroad, he reflected broad currents of thought about foreign policy more suited to the 1920s – or even the late 1960s – than to the frightening years spanned by Hitler and Stalin. Like the two men who had affected him most, his father and Herbert Hoover, Taft had clung steadfastly to a set of assumptions about the world. Like them again, he had been swept aside while new men of destiny – Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower – came in to fill the void. When the delegates whispered “Taft Can’t Win,” they were talking not only about a man who lacked charisma but a figure who seemed uncomfortable with the world of 1952.””
“Darwin's work is a testament to the power of two of the most basic tools used in research, the pencil and paper.””
“If a person names as his three favorites of my books Stranger, Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers … then I believe that he has grokked what I meant. But if he likes one”
“She is what I feel to be a good person in the word’s simplest and plainest meaning. Which includes lashing out with her claws on some occasions when others may consider it improper”
“In the Senate the key leader was Robert Taft of Ohio, son of the former President. Acting quickly, they drafted the so-called Taft-Hartley bill in early 1947. Taft-Hartley was a bold effort to weaken the pro-labor Wagner Act of 1935.””
“It appears that there is now a drive on to make the world safe for morons[,]””
“are incurably conceited and pathologically unsure of themselves; they respond to stroking the way a cat does.””
“the right to be naked and not to be ruled by Mrs. Grundy deserves financial support from anyone who believes in freedom.””
“My religious beliefs are private to me,” he began, … and I suppose that yours may be to you. I am going to talk about more homely matters, matters so simple and obvious that it has almost gone out of fashion to talk about them”
“Family is, after all”
“Imagine how well you would drive if after taking your driving test you bought a car and parked in your driveway only to drive in emergencies!””