"Since when did a mathematician need any tools but his own head? Pythagoras had done well enough with a stick and a stretch of sand."

Robert A. Heinlein Literature See all quotes by Robert A. Heinlein →

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More by Robert A. Heinlein

“Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth—you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers.”

“Clark just looked bored and contemptuous and said nothing, because Clark would not bother to interfere with Armageddon unless there was ten percent in it for him.”

“Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.”

“He seeks order, not truth. Suppose truth defies order, will he accept it? Will you? I think not.”

“I used to wonder what it was like to be rich. Now I am and it turns out to be mostly headaches.”

“Is it not better to be in ignorance than to believe falsely?”

Resonant Thoughts

"Congratulations, you have a sense of humor. And to those who didn't: Go stick your head in the mud."

— Jesse Ventura

Politics1951

#humor

"I imagine, there must be only a very, very few men in the world that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to one …"

— Anne Brontë

Literature1820–1849

#humor

"Four blind men went to see an elephant. One touched the leg of the elephant, and said, "The elephant is like a pillar." The second touched the trunk, and said, "The elephant is like a thick stick or c…"

— Ramakrishna

Religion1836–1886

#power

"Thousands — millions and billions — of animals are killed for food. That is very sad. We human beings can live without meat, especially in our modern world. We have a great variety of vegetables and o…"

— 14th Dalai Lama

Religion1935

#justice