Matt Whitlock > Matt's Quotes

“I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting"
...
But that's not all people laugh at."
Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh sweetheart... a joke, or anything else- but something that gave you a a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness wasn't there." He thought. "I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist--a master--and that is what Auguste Rodin was--can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Women should be obscene and not heard.”
― Paul Meredith Potter

“I grok in fullness.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“In the twentieth century, nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America---and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“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.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I’ve been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they don’t give kissing their whole attention. They can’t. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus—or their chances of making the gal—or their own techniques in kissing—or maybe worry about jobs, or money, or will husband or papa or the neighbors catch on. Mike doesn’t have technique . . . but when Mike kisses you he isn’t doing anything else. You’re his whole universe . . . and the moment is eternal because he doesn’t have any plans and isn’t going anywhere. Just kissing you.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Do-gooding is like treating hemophilia - the real cure is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death...before they breed more hemophiliacs.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“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.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Being sorry won't get you into heaven. Get happy, son. Get that old spring into your step and stay on your toes.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Yes, Boss?'
Dorcas, the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, no-good parasite.'
She yawned again. 'Everybody knows that.'
Nevermind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to stop being sensible--a time to stand up and be counted--strike a blow for liberty--smite the wicked.'
Ummm...'
So quit yawning, the time has come.'
She glanced down. 'Maybe I had better get dressed.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“He's an honest politician--he stays bought.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“There is no safety this side of the grave”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Secrecy begets tyranny.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land