The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Interpretation
Jealousy stems from insecurity, and a strong individual does not feel jealous.
This quote by Robert A. Heinlein highlights the notion that jealousy is a reflection of personal insecurity rather than a healthy emotional response. A self-assured and capable person does not succumb to feelings of jealousy, as they possess the confidence to trust themselves and their relationships without fear of inadequacy.
In practice
In a discussion about overcoming insecurities, this quote can encourage individuals to focus on self-love instead of jealousy.
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.
Being stigmatied by sex is being marked by its meaning in a human life of loneliness and imperfection, where some pain is indelible.
I feel that we Germans are spending less and less time talking to each other. And even less time listening to each other.
Heather Badcock meant no harm. She never did mean harm, but there is no doubt that people like Heather Badcock (and like my old friend Alison Wilde), are capable of doing a lot of harm because they lack - not kindness, they have kindness - but any real consideration for the way their actions may affect other people. She though always of what an action meant to her, never sparing a thought to what it might mean to somebody else.
Too often, when transgender people die, family members or funeral homes will end up dressing a body of a transgender person in the garments of the gender that they were assigned at birth instead of their gender identity. They're often dead-named and misgendered.
Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new married couple; in that of the lady particularly; it tells you that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you can have no hopes for her.
If you have not had direct firsthand experience of loving a category of person - a person of a different race, a profoundly religious person, things that are real stark differences between people - I think it is very hard to dare, or necessarily even want, to write fully from the inside of a person.
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