The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the cyclical nature of learning and self-growth over time.
In this quote, Robert A. Heinlein expresses the idea that our future selves are shaped by the knowledge and experiences we acquire in our youth. This highlights the interconnectedness of our past, present, and future, suggesting that the wisdom we gain at one stage of life is essential for our development and can later be passed down to our younger selves, creating a continuous loop of teaching and learning.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of mentorship.
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.
We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.
There is no extrahistorical or eternalist or abstractivistically pure standpoint where we can get oriented in the absolute Truth per se before dealing with the concrete lineaments of how we happen exist in this time and place. We are participants in a dynamic system and we know its profile only by its action in organizing how we interact together and how we see our own selves. "The truth is the whole," and the whole is a system of living energy: our life as human and historical spirits.
All of us have not been to a natural prison, but everybody in here has had a spiritual prison.
Strong hope is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be.
Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.
Live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.
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