“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
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Stranger in a Strange Land
Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with—and eventual transformation of—terrestrial culture. The title is an allusion to the phrase in Exodus 2:22. According to Heinlein, the novel's working title was The Heretic. Several later editions of the book have promoted it as "The most famous Science Fiction Novel ever written".
Quotes
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Robert Anson Heinlein
Canonical work source
“The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.”
“The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for---if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most.”
“That God is in truth the sort of bloodthirsty paranoid Who would rend to bits forty-two children for the crime of sassing one of his priests. Don't ask me about the Front Office's policies;...”
“No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the...”
“Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness.”
“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 alm...”
“If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.”
“Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.”
“A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.”
“It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they wo...”
“People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in e...”
“Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.”
“But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”
“But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no p...”