The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.
Interpretation
Success depends on our ability to make informed choices with limited information.
This quote highlights the importance of intuition and decision-making in navigating life's uncertainties. It suggests that to achieve our goals or simply to survive, we often rely on our ability to make educated guesses repeatedly, especially when faced with incomplete data.
In practice
In a graduation speech about the uncertainties of the future.
The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
An armed society is a polite society.
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.
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.
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others
From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.
In Greece wise men speak and fools decide.
The less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs.
Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural inclination to avoid hard work by promising the immediate satisfaction of every desire.
Braininess is not attractive unless combined with some signs of elegance; class.
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