Quotes from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

“A ratio­nal anar­chist believes that con­cepts such as ‘state’ and ‘soci­ety’ and ‘gov­ern­ment’ have no exis­tence save as phys­i­cal­ly exem­pli­fied in the acts of self-respon­si­ble indi­vid­u­als. He believes that it is impos­si­ble to shift blame, share blame, dis­trib­ute blame… as blame, guilt, respon­si­bil­i­ty are mat­ters tak­ing place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being ratio­nal, he knows that not all indi­vid­u­als hold his eval­u­a­tions, so he tries to live per­fect­ly in an imper­fect world…aware that his effort will be less than per­fect yet undis­mayed by self-knowl­edge of self-fail­ure.”

[…]

“My point is that one per­son is respon­si­ble. Always. […] In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Indi­vid­u­als. Each respon­si­ble for his own acts.”

The Moon is a Harsh Mis­tress by Robert Hein­lein pp 84–85

I’m struck at how very exis­ten­tial­ist that quote is. Just as I’m struck at how very apro­pos the fol­low­ing quote is to the #occu­py move­ment.

“A man­aged democ­ra­cy is a won­der­ful thing […] for the managers…and its great­est strength is a ‘free press’ when ‘free’ is defined as ‘respon­si­ble’ and the man­agers define what is ‘irre­spon­si­ble.’ ”

The Moon is a Harsh Mis­tress by Robert Hein­lein pg 256