"I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious."

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

"This sets us off on a path which was opened for us almost without our knowledge, I think, for we have not really considered it, by two philosophers in history: Spinoza and Marx. Against what should re…"

— Baruch Spinoza

Philosophy1632–1677

#knowledge

"Even if he didn't sell a huge amount of records in the U.S., he had a lot of impact..."

— Jeff Buckley

Music1966–1997

#history

"This new-democratic republic will be different from the old European-American form of capitalist republic under bourgeois dictatorship, which is the old democratic form and already out of date. On the…"

— Mao Zedong

Politics1893–1976

#politics

"Reason is like a runner who doesn't know that the race is over, or, like Penelope, constantly undoing what it creates.... It is better suited to pulling things down than to building them up, and bette…"

— Pierre Bayle

Entertainment1647–1706

#philosophy