6 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes on Authority

Robert A. Heinlein quotes on authority

2. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.

19. My wife Ticky is an anarchist-individualist... When she was in the Navy during the early 'forties she showed up one morning in proper uniform but with her red hair held down by a simple navy-blue band - a hair ribbon. It was neat (Ticky is always neat) and it suited the rest of her outfit esthetically, but it was undeniably a hair ribbon and her division officer had fits. 'If you can show me,' Ticky answered with simple diginity, 'where it says one word in the Navy Uniform Regulations on the subject of hair ribbons, I'll take it off. Otherwise not.' See what I mean? She doesn't have the right attitude.

60. Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure 'good' government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare - most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the 'backseat-driver syndrome.'

61. Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

75. Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

132. The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it's lovely work if you can stomach it.