Robert A. Heinlein on Knowledge

"“Sometimes I think,” he told Tex, “that Th’Wing thinks that I am an idiot studying hard to become a moron—but flunking the course."

"You're in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish."

"When I don’t understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why."

"Mr. Stone was satisfied, being sure in his heart that any person skilled with mathematical tools could learn anything else he needed to know, with or without a master."

"If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat."

"As Thorby learned to use his mind, he found that he liked to; he developed an insatiable appetite for the printed page."

"I don’t know; maybe Frank had good intentions, but I sometimes think “good intentions” should be declared a capital crime."

"Wong shook his head sadly. “I sometimes think that modern education is deliberately designed to handicap a boy."

"The arrangement, classification, and accessibility of knowledge remains in all ages the most pressing problem."

"“Joe, I’ve learned by bitter experience not to trust statements set off by ‘naturally,’ ‘of course,’ or ‘that goes without saying.’"

"I think girls should be raised in the bottom of a deep, dark sack until they are old enough to know better."

"High I.Q., good compatibility index, superior education—everything that makes a person pleasant and easy and interesting to have around."

"I hadn’t learned much in high school; I had majored in girls."

"There is one thing no head of a country can know, and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him."

"Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers."

"Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the past with less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on the spot."

"“Let me add,” he went on, “that since I handle secret and most-secret despatches, I know things that I don’t know, if I make my meaning clear."

"Of course the intellectual class did not notice this for many decades, as an intellectual is a highly educated man who can't do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of the lack."

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

"Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me—death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way."

"Horses can manufacture more horses and that is one trick that tractors have never learned."

"Parents probably don’t know that they are playing favorites even when they are doing it."

"But mathematics Thorby saw no use in, other than the barbaric skill of counting money. But presently he learned that mathematics need not have use; it was a game, like chess but more fun."

"Oh, sure, I learned about other systems in school—but it didn’t soak in. Now I am beginning to grasp emotionally that There Are Other Ways Than Ours…and that people can be happy under them."

"Bill, why is it that some apparently-grown men never learn to do simple arithmetic?"

"I am learning that we still have things to learn."

"I don’t think Father Hugo is any more mistaken than the most learned theologian and he might be closer to the truth. Jacob, I don’t think anyone knows Who’s in charge."

"A man has to grow up in a language to be able to understand it scrambled."

"I can’t evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven’t lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs."

"“From the ignoramuses we get for recruits I’ve reached the conclusion that this new-fangled ‘functional education’ has abolished studying in favor of developing their cute little personalities."