English is the largest of human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language -- this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and most flexible -- despite its barbaric accretions . . . or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it.
("Stranger in a Strange Land")
More Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein:
Audacity, always audacity - soundest principal of strategy.Robert A. Heinlein
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
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Gratitude is a euphemism for resentment.
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One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed.
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Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.
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There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
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Based on Topics: Astronomy & Cosmology Quotes, English QuotesBased on Keywords: accretions, franca, lingua
In a condition of society and under an industrial organization which places labor completely at the mercy of capital, the accumulations of capital will necessarily be rapid, and an unequal distribution of wealth is at once to be observed.
Leland Stanford
I don't enjoy the boo scare when you're watching a movie and then suddenly there's a big shark on the screen. The only thing they're doing is catching you off guard.
Sergio Aragones
As all human beings are, in my view, creatures of God's design, we must respect all other human beings. That does not mean I have to agree with their choices or agree with their opinions, but indeed I respect them as human beings.
Stockwell Day