It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier. – Time Enough For Love


So there you go, 30 days of Robert Heinlein quotes.  I hope they’ve been enjoyable.


Next, we’ll have 30 days of Ronald Reagan.

Early rising may not be a vice … but it is certainly no virtue. The old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed. – Time Enough For Love

Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. – Time Enough For Love


My Take – I hope that I won’t be seeing any of you on “Girls Gone Wild” videos after tonight.   But tonight of all nights is a good night to let your hair down, forget the diet, and enjoy life as much as you can.  


I will be spending it, along with my beautiful wife, chaperoning a teenage girl sleepover.  I’m such a hedonist.


Have a fun and safe New Year’s Eve!

There is no safety this side of the grave. – Stranger in a Strange Land


My Take:


Stay aware of your surroundings and what’s going on around you.  Carry and be able to effectively use your guns.  Never assume that “it doesn’t happen here”.

Live each golden moment as if it were eternity — without fear, without hope, but with a sybaritic gusto. – Stranger in a Strange Land

Each sunrise is a precious jewel…for it may never be followed by its sunset. – Stranger in a Strange Land 

I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much… because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting. – Stranger in a Strange Land




My take – Life can be an enjoyable, wonderful experience.  A lot of it is an irritating pain in the butt. Some of it is excruciatingly painful.  We laugh, play, sing, and do whatever it is we do to let the pressure valve in our soul open up so that we can let some of that pain go.  Maybe it’s shooting electronic Nazi’s, or a little recoil therapy, or playing an instrument, or laughing until your ribs hurt, but we all need something.  The cost of not letting it out is damage to your psyche and your soul.  

I have learned two ways to tie my shoes. One way is only good for lying down. The other way is good for walking. – Stranger in a Strange Land

My take – There is no such thing to me as useless knowledge and learning.  However, some learning might be more useful than others.  The trick is to know which is which before you start learning.

I am explain. I did not have the word. You grok. Anne groks. I grok. The grass under my feet groks in happy beauty. But I needed the word. The word is God. – Stranger in a Strange Land

We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time. We’ve never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. – Starship Troopers


My take – Heinlein wrote these words back when war was an overwhelmingly indiscriminate killer.  We can still wage war so that entire grid squares get burned to the ground, but we’ve invested decades of time and billions of dollars to create weapons and tactics that allow us to pick and choose our targets well enough that the deaths of bystanders is now considered an anomaly.