Quotes from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

by Robert Heinlein



     Private where private belongs, public where it's needed, and an admission that circumstances alter cases. Nothing doctrinaire.
           - p83

     I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
          - p 84

     Our first purpose was not to be noticed.
          - p117

     We were prosperous because we never bought anything farm could produce.
           - p 122

     One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ... and accepts his sentence undismayed.
           - p 147

     Where do you start explaining when a man's words show there isn't anything he understands about subject, instead is loaded with preconceptions that don't fit facts and doesn't even know he has?
          - p163

     ... men without women don't care whether they stay alive or not.
          - p164

     ... government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master ... distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional ... whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!
          - p190-1

     Line marriage is the strongest possible device for conserving capital and insuring the welfare of children--the two basic societal functions for marriage anywhere--in an environment in which there is no security, neither for capital nor for children, other than that devised by individuals.
           - p 261

     When faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.
          - p 290

     Sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive ...
          - p 303

     If possible, leave room for your enemy to become your friend. -
           - p 334

[note: page numbers from the Orb Edition, Tom Doherty Associates]


Notes From Windward - Index - Vol. 71