“I was just trying to show you,” he went on, “just how insubstantial a ‘common sense’ idea can be when you pin it down. Neither ‘common sense’ nor ‘l… - Robert A. Heinlein

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“I was just trying to show you,” he went on, “just how insubstantial a ‘common sense’ idea can be when you pin it down. Neither ‘common sense’ nor ‘logic’ can prove anything. Proof comes from experiment, or to put it another way, from experience, and from nothing else.”

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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.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Pen Names: Anson MacDonald Lyle Monroe John Riverside Caleb Saunders Simon York
Birth Name: Robert Anson Heinlein
Alternative Names: Robert Heinlein
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Additional quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

Cast me into a dungeon;, burn me at the state, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives — but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.

Circular reasoning can’t get you out of this dilemma. Pointing to something (the physical world) and asserting that it has to have a Creator and this Creator necessarily has such-and-such attributes proves nothing save that you have made certain assertions without proof. You have pointed at a physical thing, the physical world; you have asserted that this thing has to have a “Creator” (Who told you that? What’s his mailing address? Who told him?). But to assert that something physical was created out of nothing—not even empty space—by a thingamajig you can’t point to is not to make a philosophical statement or any sort of statement, it is mere noise, amphigory, sound and fury signifying nothing.
Jesuits take fourteen years to learn to talk that sort of nonsense. Southern fundamentalist preachers learn to talk it in a much shorter time. Either way, it’s nonsense.

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