"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Robert A. Heinlein
It's now known as "you didn't build that".
4 comments:
Have you read "Enough Time For Love"? Do you know who this "extremely small minority, frequently despised" is referring to?
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"Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level."
"Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be."
Robert A. Heinlein
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I have not read that book. But the quote stands alone in its current application to entrepreneurs and creators of small businesses in a decaying Leftist society, which is why it is being passed around the internet these days: it fits our situation as Main Street storefronts are being boarded up.
As for the quotes on morality, that is the flip side since they reflect the moral void of the Consequentialist (parasitic) AtheoLeft.
Fiction contains characterizations of all sorts of differing viewpoints. I don’t know the original situations or contexts of those quotes, and I don’t know that either quote actually reflects Heinlein’s own thinking or philosophy. He was a conservative, an engineer, and a science fiction writer, and his bio is all I know about him.
Here's some more quotes to give you an idea about Heinlein's own view-points:
History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. [Robert Heinlein]
(Religious) Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness. [Robert Heinlein]
Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it. [Robert A. Heinlein]
The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate. [Robert Heinlein]
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful--just stupid.) [Robert Heinlein]
The most ridiculous concept ever perpetrated by H.Sapiens is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history. [Robert Heinlein]
OK, you win; no more quotes from this twit.
Too bad he's not around to take the Atheist Challenge. Perhaps he'd show his prowess at disciplined logic by refuting theism.
But I doubt it. His views are cartoonish. The last quote is a juvenile distortion of religion, a distortion which he apparently created in order to justify his hatred of it. I suspect that Aquinas would either set him straight or illuminate Heinlein's own contradictory intellectual laziness. And if his morals are merely the Consequentialism of his thoughts on sin, I certainly wouldn't let him stay the night.
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