Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place… - Robert A. Heinlein
" "Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority... other than through the tragic logic of history... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.
About Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein (7 July 1907 – 8 May 1988) was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of science fiction of the 20th Century.
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Additional quotes by Robert A. Heinlein
There is no subject inappropriate for scientific research. Johann, we’ve let you fellows have a monopoly of such matters for too long. The most serious questions in the world have been left to faith or speculation. It is time for scientists to cope with them, or admit that science is no more than pebble counting.
But, like theology, metaphysics has no answers. Just questions.
But what lovely questions!…
Metaphysics has polysyllabic words for all of these ideas but you don’t have to use them; Anglo-Saxon monosyllables do just as well for questions that have no answers.
Persons who claim to have answers to these questions invariably are fakers after your money. No exceptions. If you point out their fakery, if you dare to say aloud that the emperor has no clothes, they will lynch you if possible, always from the highest of motives.