top of page

"Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is-- so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Politics quotes

"Democracy, freedom and liberty do not make us more than what we are; it is our commitment that matters."

"Canada remains alienated from its allies, shut out of the reconstruction process to some degree, unable to influence events. There is no upside to the position Canada took."

"A market where chief executive officers make 262 times that of the average worker and 821 times that of the minimum-wage worker is not a market that is working well. And it is surely not working well enough to build a solid middle class."

"Politics doesn't corrupt people, people corrupt politics."

"The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship."

"Almost everyone in politics nowadays has at least one conflict of interest."

"They are now informing me that not only are they better than the powerful, the masters of the world whose spittle they have to lick (not from fear, not at all from fear! but because God orders them to honour those in authority) " not only are they better, but they have a "better time, or at least will have a better time one day. But enough! enough! I can't bear it any longer. Bad air! Bad air! This workshop where ideals are fabricated " it seems to me just to stink of lies."
Explore more quotes by Robert A. Heinlein


"One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen."


"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."


"Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse---and without examining evidence which their "common sense told them was impossible."


"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 effort has to be their own . . . and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing . . . is one that they can't or won't entertain."


"He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two of the papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once."


"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."


"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."


"The country and culture commonly known as "America" had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degrees---its religious revivals were often hysterical in a fashion almost Dionysian."
bottom of page