Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

There isn't one thing the federal government does that anybody in Big Business would emulate, at least not in the profit sector.

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.

If a Statute make use of a Word the meaning of which is well-known at the Common Law, such word shall be taken in the same Sense it was understood at the common Law.

I believe in nationalizing those public necessities which by their very nature are too important to be held in the control of private individuals. By these I mean banking, credit and currency, power, light, oil and natural gas and our God-given natural resources.

The time has come when the Executive branch of this Government must enforce the plain letter of the law and check monopoly, or it must turn the people over boldly into the hands of exploiters grown impudent and ruthlessly aggressive through long years of wanton violation of the law.

There are certain domains which are so vital to the well-being of citizens that they must be kept out of the private sector and the law of supply and demand.

The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.

Neither this people or any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the government a still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also to be used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole…. [We must] keep the great highways of commerce open to all on reasonable and equitable terms.

I think that whenever businesses harm the economy, harm workers, harm consumers, or undermine human rights in any way, then it is the role of the government to make sure that they don't do that and to make sure that markets are fair and they operate properly.

I opposed bad policies like any responsible citizen and business can. The carbon tax and the mining tax were both bad policies that, combined, worked to make Australia more over-regulated and less cost competitive.

... between government, business, and the public, there is a triangular community of interest. Clearly, it is in business' interest to shape its behavior to prevailing public values; it is more efficient to do so than not to do so. It is also clear that government is the high-cost alternative through which public values are imposed on corporations that do not accurately perceive these values.

Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government... They have driven the American economy since its founding, and the prosperity of our country is largely dependent on the free operation of corporations. But some corporations don't want free markets, and they don't want democracy. They want profits.

We thought the companies that owned these [social media] platforms would care about the country and their impact on it. They don’t. They actively promote conflict and conspiracy and anesthetizing nonsense — because those things promote engagement, and engagement equals money.

It is a very heavy responsibility [to be a prime-minister] to make, but someone has to make it for our country and I am thrilled and honoured to have that opportunity and that responsibility.

I'm a United States senator, and I have a responsibility to the people of my state - also to the people of this country.

I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.

Here is one optimists reason for believing unity will prevail ... within the next hundred years ... nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century -- citizen of the world -- will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st. All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary.

The message [of Donald Trump ] is that if anybody lives in those circumstances in this country, that's something that the government should be working to try to change.

When I compare myself and my opponents in other countries in the light of history, I do not fear the verdict on our respective mentalities.

If the country is to survive as a democracy it will depend on voters who understand how our political institutions have evolved and the events that went into their creation. A nation's sense of its history is indistinguishable from its social cohesion.

Here we have some people who call themselves Christians and they forget Jesus Christ was a Jew. Something like anti-Semitism is an artificial way of avoiding responsibility. You blame the problems in your country on someone else, on some group.

Most countries choose to have government run the economy.

I honestly believe I'd make one of the worst elected officials in the history of this country.

I think it's pretty classic if you look at the way entertainment reflects the country's status. There was a reason in the '50s when communism was bubbling that there were a million zombie movies. Because that is the direct allocation. So for the last two years we've been hearing, "Make America great again." People go, "Well, America was never great." What do you mean? What you mean is that they want to look back in history. And so I think it's only natural for entertainment to reflect that.

The national interest is predetermined by geopolitics or the history of a country. Important political leaders never just followed their interests - they were concerned about the interests of their people.