A few months back I finally finished reading Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi opus, Time Enough for Love. It’s a long, sprawling, ambitious book which made me glad my first exposure to Heinlein was the life-changing Starship Troopers, for I fear Time Enough would have put me off Heinlein indefinitely.

Don’t get me wrong, the book is classic Heinlein, full of contradictory character traits and the most un-PC of dialog. Free love and quasi-anarchistic distrust for authority blends seamlessly with a very authoritarian streak which seems antithetical to the rest.

This month is Robert Heinlein’s 100th birthday, and in honor of the man who’s written the only pre-1980 sci-fi books I’ve ever loved, here’s my favorite Heinlein quote: