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All three of us are prisoners of our early indoctrinations, for it is hard, very nearly impossible, to shake off one's earliest training. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I had taken a partner once before - but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye
open. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels -- Robert A. Heinlein
I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats - I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures. -- Robert A. Heinlein
God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good - and is no sillier than any other theology. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Once in a great while lips meet and two spirits merge for a time and the universe is right and complete and the planets wheel in their proper places. Once in a while the lonely, broken spirit of man is healed and made whole. For a while his quest is over and his questions are answered. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Money is the sincerest of all flattery. Women love to be flattered. So do men. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The shamans are forever yacking about their snake oil miracles. I prefer the real McCoy, a pregnant woman. -- Robert A. Heinlein
High Frontier places a bullet-proof vest on our bare chest. High Frontier is as non-aggressive as a bullet-proof vest. There is no way to kill anyone with High Frontier - all that High Frontier can do is to keep others from killing us. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I am not sentimental about kids. Little monsters, most of them, who don't civilize until they are grown and sometimes not then. -- Robert A. Heinlein
You evaded my question." "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A human being has no natural rights of any nature. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Touch is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, or taste, and no human ever ceases to need it. Keep your children short on pocket money but long on hugs -- Robert A. Heinlein
Revolution is an amateur thing for almost everybody; -- Robert A. Heinlein
You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but
if you will pardon my saying so
all wrong. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces
with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything now. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When it don't rain, the roof don't leak; when it rains, I can't fix it nohow. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Patriotism is not 'my country right or wrong'; patriotism means loving the ideals for which America stands and having the courage to speak up when these ideals are distorted for personal or political gain. The American government was instituted to be the servant of the people, not our master. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It does not pay a prophet to be too specific." - L. Sprague de Camp -- Robert A. Heinlein
Dress yourself in heavy fishing waders, put on an overcoat and boxing gloves and a bucket over your head, then have somebody strap two sacks of cement across your shoulders and you will know what a space suit feels like under one gravity. -- Robert A. Heinlein
- I'm so busy doing what I must do that I don't have time for what I ought to do ... and I never get a chance to do what I want to do!
- Son, that's universal. The way to keep that recipe from killing you is occasionally to do what you want to do anyhow. -- Robert A. Heinlein
History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Time was when I was immune to emotional shocks. But as I get older, I don't get tougher; I get softer. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the lord in vain- then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system? -- Robert A. Heinlein
No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sheffield had decided, centuries back, that the saddest thing about ephemerals was that their little lives rarely held time enough for love.) "Oh, -- Robert A. Heinlein
The saddest thing about ephemerals was that their little lives rarely held time enough for love. -- Robert A. Heinlein
One damn sure thing! - he wasn't going to let them be rough with that Smith lad. He was a nuisance, granted, but he was a nice lad and rather appealing in a helpless, half-witted way. -- Robert A. Heinlein
She taught me to love by loving me, and I learned - rather slowly; I wasn't too good a pupil, being set in my ways and lacking her natural talent. But I did learn. Learned that supreme happiness lies in wanting to keep another person safe and warm and happy, and being privileged to try. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with her first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Private,' he said firmly. 'Family matter. Go have a drink.'
'Whose family?'
'A death in yours, if you insist. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you pray hard enough, water will run uphill. How hard? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course! -- Robert A. Heinlein
I hate to tell you this, but you are just stupid and eager and sincere enough to make the kind of officer that men love to follow into some silly predicament. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for creations of eunuchs. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called 'behaviorist psychology.' -- Robert A. Heinlein
Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Learn to say No - and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Little Brother...precious darling...little imp with lively legs and lovely lewd lascivious lecherous licentious libido...beautiful bumps and pert posterior...with soft voice and gentle hands. My baby darling. -- Robert A. Heinlein
No one ever does anything but what he wants to do - 'enjoys' - within the possibilities open to him. If I change a tire, it's because I enjoy it more than being stranded. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A thing can be fine on paper but utterly crummy in the field. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Or maybe he was seeing double. Bad stuff, gin. Should 'ave switched to rum a long time ago. Good stuff, rum. You could drink it, or take a bath in it. No, that was gin - he meant Joe. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Politics is not evil; politics is the human race's most magnificent achievement. -- Robert A. Heinlein
An air car was just landing in the garden by the pool and beings under it were complaining of injuries and indignities done them. Perhaps this was the trouble he could feel? Grasses were for walking on, flowers and bushes were not - this was a wrongness. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The moment I put it on, that suit became an old, familiar, and valued friend - and I became taller and wider across the shoulders. It could not have fit better if it had been made on my body. It knew things about me I wouldn't learn for years yet, and approved of them all. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does. But the proper closest statement of it that can be made in English is that God cannot avoid noting the sparrow because the Sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God's thoughts. -- Robert A. Heinlein
You know the classification of cultures into 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector ... and miss. -- Robert A. Heinlein
As for the second notion, the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a latent deep strain of religious fanaticism in this our culture; it is rooted in our history -- Robert A. Heinlein
Religion is a solace to many people and it is even conceivable that some religion, somewhere, really is Ultimate Truth. But in many cases, being religious is merely a form of conceit. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Duke, almost the only human characteristic Mike seems to possess is an overwhelming desire to be liked. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Support for the arts
merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! -- Robert A. Heinlein
The ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I'm not suggesting anything. People get hurt every day. This matter must be cleared up, Joseph, for everybody. The greatest good of the greatest number, as you are so fond of quoting. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is an old, old story about a theologian who was asked to reconcile the Doctrine of Divine Mercy with the doctrine of infant damnation. 'The Almighty,' he explained, 'finds it necessary to do things in His official and public capacity which in His private and personal capacity He deplores. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Hell, was no military man; was computer technician who had bumbled into wrong field. -- Robert A. Heinlein
First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes. -- Robert A. Heinlein
My old man says when it's time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge ... and stronger. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When railroading time comes you can railroad - but not before. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Once a month, some women act like men act all the time. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones - by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether universe or a smaller one. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Stupidity is the only natural capital offense. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws - always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. -- Robert A. Heinlein
To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It takes two to create a heaven, but hell can be accomplished by one. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it a 'good. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Heinlein's Rules for Writers
Rule One: You Must Write
Rule Two: Finish What Your Start
Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market
Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold -- Robert A. Heinlein
The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win. -- Robert A. Heinlein
My vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left. -- Robert A. Heinlein
These people who deal in fancification to fool the public think nobody can read and write but themselves. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Love is a that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own ... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy -- Robert A. Heinlein
The duty of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is to oppose. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong. -- Robert A. Heinlein
You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Nurse, if she didn't have more money than any person ought to have, you might be tempted to call it senile dementia. As it is, she is in for a rest and a check-up. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot. -- Robert A. Heinlein
What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it ... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Just a man, with a face-shaped face, -- Robert A. Heinlein
Why do some people act as if making money offended their delicate minds? I am out for a legitimate profit, and not ashamed of it; the fact that people will pay money for my goods and services shows that my work is useful. -- Robert A. Heinlein
He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The universe will let us know - later - whether or not Man has any "right" to expand through it. In -- Robert A. Heinlein
I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey ... -- Robert A. Heinlein
With eternity to draw on there could be no reason for hurrying - 'hurry' was not a concept in Martian. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing the risks you can't avoid. This permits you to play out the game untroubled by the certainty of the outcome. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is no such thing as 'social gambling.' Either you are there to cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it
or you're a sucker. If you don't like this choice
don't gamble. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Any custom is man-made and is therefore a finite attempt to describe an infinity of relationships. It follows as the night from day that any custom necessarily has its exceptions. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Ben Caxton, I will lie right here in the grass and starve before I will get up to push a button that is six inches from your right forefinger. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who's boss. -- Robert A. Heinlein
You're not privileged to call me 'Boss'; you're not tax deductible. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I refuse to grow younger. I came by my decrepitude the hard way and I propose to enjoy it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
History does not record anywhere a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Her calculations were sometimes a little fuzzy, for the same reason that her checkbook sometimes did not balance; Becky Vesey (as she had been known as a child) had never really mastered the multiplication tables and she was inclined to confuse sevens with nines. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Don't ever become a pessimist ... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It may take endless wars and unbearable population pressure to force-feed a technology to the point where it can cope with space. In the universe, space travel may be the normal birth pangs of an otherwise dying race. A test. Some races pass, some fail. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - and quickly. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of single-minded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money. -- Robert A. Heinlein
All those religions
they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Death isn't funny."
"Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us - us humans - death is so sad that we must laugh at it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
To assess the intelligence of a committee, divide the IQ of its stupidest member by the number of members. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The fact is I am a compulsive reader. Thirty-five cents' worth of Gold Medal Original will put me right to sleep. Or Perry Mason. But I'll read the ads in an old Paris-Match that has been used to wrap herring before I'll do without. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Minds me of a married woman who was very proud of her virtue. She slept with other men only when her husband was away. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If the universe has any purpose more important than topping a woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I've never heard of it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Till the stars grow old and our sun grows cold? Will you fight for us, lie for us, love us - and let us love you? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Love is what still goes on when you're not horny. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sex without love is merely healthy exercise. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The more you love, the more you can love
and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled. -- Robert A. Heinlein
[J]uvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue
indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge and duty and embraces it more than the self-love he was born with. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The only constant thing in these shifting, fairy-chess worlds is human love. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The word 'love' designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness. -- Robert A. Heinlein
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Almost everything about a human creature is ridiculous, except its ability to suffer bravely and die gallantly for whatever it loves and believes in. The validity of that belief, the appropriateness of that love, is irrelevant; it is the bravery and the gallantry that count. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It is impossible for a man to love his wife whole heartedly without loving all women somewhat. I suppose that the converse must be true of women. -- Robert A. Heinlein
On the steps of the Federal Building we ran into Carmencita Ibanez, a classmate of ours and one of the nice things about being a member of a race with two sexes. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Love your country, but never trust its government. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It took you long enough to answer your phone." "It's my phone, Mr. Secretary. Sometimes I don't answer it at all. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The Colorado River was at a record low and the towers in Lake Mead stood high out of the water. But the Angelenos committed communal suicide by watering lawns as usual. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sit back down - and for God's sake quit trying to be as nasty as I am; you don't have my years of practice. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In the twentieth century, nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America
and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Though weather is important while it happens it seems to me to be pretty dull to look back on. You can take descriptions of most any sort of weather out of an almanac and stick them in just anywhere; they'll probably fit. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I wonder how harmless such people are? To what extent civilization is retarded by the laughing jackasses, the empty-minded belittlers? -- Robert A. Heinlein
I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I've been afraid so many times that I am no longer scared to be afraid again.
What can't be cured must be endured. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Everybody is equal. Everybody! That's the law."
"They are? Only from on top. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I'm a professional bad example. You can learn a lot by watching me. Or listening to me. Either one. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Why don't they make more science fiction movies? The answer to any question starting, Why don't they- is almost always, Money. -- Robert A. Heinlein
We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Gratitude is a euphemism for resentment. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Don't tell me violence doesn't solve anything. Look at Carthage. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If I choose to dine with publicans and sinners, that is my business. But I do not choose to break bread with Pharisees. -- Robert A. Heinlein
As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Young man, can you restore my eyesight?" "Sir? Why, no, sir!" "You would find it much easier than to instill moral virtue - social responsibility - into a person who doesn't have it, doesn't want it, and resents having the burden thrust on him. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Oh, "Tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't,' I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, 'or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It was better to live with disappointment and frustration than to live without hope. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Always tell her she is beautiful, especially if she is not. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I had no sympathy for him and still haven't. That old saw about "To understand all is to forgive all" is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them. -- Robert A. Heinlein
What we think of as 'Physical beauty' is almost certainly a tag for a complex of useful survival characteristics. Smartness intelligence among them. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings ... but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Do you know your Bible?'
'Uh, not very well.'
'It merits study, it contains very practical advice for most emergencies. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I think that science fiction has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Uh, all right. Boss, you're infuriating when you're logical!" "Yes, a most uncouth way to argue. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Always cut the cards ... and smile when you lose. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Even with Las Vegas giddy around me I felt as alone as Robinson Crusoe. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pu -- Robert A. Heinlein
The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. -- Robert A. Heinlein
She might say: "This mess will clear up if you take that troublemaker there - What's your name? You, with the goatee - out and shoot him. Do it now."
Glory Road; Heinlein -- Robert A. Heinlein
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. -- Robert A. Heinlein
My child, a true-confession story should never be tarnished by any taint of truth. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Only a sadistic scoundrel-or a fool-tells the bald truth on social occasions. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Another ingredient in a happy marriage: Budget the luxuries first! -- Robert A. Heinlein
A family reunion is an effective form of birth control. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I had the unsettling feeling that I had been completely mistaken as to the very nature of the world I was in, as if every part was something wildly different from what it appeared to be ... -- Robert A. Heinlein
The great trouble with religion - any religion - is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence.
One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason - but one cannot have both. -- Robert A. Heinlein
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'. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Certain types of loudmouthism should be a capital offense among decent people. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When a cat greets you, he makes a big operation of it, bumping, stropping your legs, buzzing like mischief. But when he leaves, he just walks off and never looks back. Cats are smart. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable- from table tapping to the superiority of their children- has never been plumbed. -- Robert A. Heinlein
At one time kings were anointed by Deity, so the problem was to see to it that Deity chose the right candidate. In this age the myth is 'the will of the people' ... but the problem changes only superficially. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate. -- Robert A. Heinlein
But, Jill, if a thing is sinful on Sunday, it is sinful on Friday - at least it groks that way to an outsider, myself - or perhaps to a man from Mars. -- Robert A. Heinlein
He shall rule them with a rod of iron. - Revelations II:25 -- Robert A. Heinlein
I'm not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I have never been able to see how a thirty-year old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year old genius ... -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. -- Robert A. Heinlein
What a man doesn't know he can't spill if he is captured; neither drugs, nor torture, nor brainwash, nor endless lack of sleep can squeeze out a secret he doesn't possess. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed - to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another - but which one? Differences are crucial. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead! -- Robert A. Heinlein
I want to spit back at a camel and ask him what he's so sour about. Maybe camels are the real 'Old Ones' on this planet ... and that what is wrong with the place. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When you read about chemistry and physics, you want to do them too. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Civilians are like beans; you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.
But you can't buy fighting spirit. -- Robert A. Heinlein
We're simply trying to survive - and the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible and concentrate on what's possible. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Science fiction" means different things to different people. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra" - in which case the term science fiction has piled up a lot of expensive overtime. -- Robert A. Heinlein
People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something. -- Robert A. Heinlein
She found as always that words on paper proved themselves; they were so beautifully true. -- Robert A. Heinlein
No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Life is short, but the years are long. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Want to back out?" Jill let out a long breath. "No. I've always wanted a life of crime. Will you teach me gangster lingo? I want to be a credit to you. -- Robert A. Heinlein
One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others. -- Robert A. Heinlein
But as a matter of strict fact, did Agnes have any "maternal" in her? When she set her mouth that way, it was hard to see it. Oh shucks, all women had maternal instincts; science had proved that. Well, hadn't they? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Most 'scientists' are bottle washers and button sorters. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Because revolution - armed uprising - requires not only dissatisfaction but aggressiveness. A revolutionist has to be willing to fight and die - or he's just a parlor pink. If you separate out the aggressive ones and make them the sheep dogs, the sheep will never give you trouble. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe
in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Anyone can see a forest fire. Skill lies in sniffing the first smoke. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Maybe the whole world held together only when you kept your attention centered on it and believed in it. If you let discrepancies creep in, you began to doubt and it began to go to pieces. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Never encourage a man to cook breakfast; it cause him to wonder if women are necessary. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I believe in the honest craft of workmen. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Being privileged to work hard for long hours at something you think is worth doing is the best kind of play. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Because the pursuit of science, despite its social benefits, is itself not a social virtue; its practitioners can be men so self-centered as to be lacking in social responsibility. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Age does not bring wisdom, Ben, but it does give perspective ... and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted. -- Robert A. Heinlein
How can you argue with a woman who won't? -- Robert A. Heinlein
There's precious little choice." "There's always a choice! This one is a choice between 'bad' and 'worse - 'which is a difference much more poignant than that between 'good' and 'better. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? -- Robert A. Heinlein
That God is in truth the sort of bloodthirsty paranoid Who would rend to bits forty-two children for the crime of sassing one of his priests. Don't ask me about the Front Office's policies; I just work here. -- Robert A. Heinlein
We always trotted everywhere at Camp Arthur Currie. I never did find out who Currie was, but he must have been a trackman. -- Robert A. Heinlein
All right, all right, have it your own way! I can't prove I'm right - so I must be wrong. Men! -- Robert A. Heinlein
Thou art God'. It's not a message of cheer and hope. It's a defiance - and an unafraid, unabashed assumption of personal responsibility. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time. -- Robert A. Heinlein
(stupid races don't build spaceships!) -- Robert A. Heinlein
To support his austerely upholstered nest and its rabble staff he put forth minimum effort for maximum return simply because it was easier to be rich than to be poor - Harshaw merely wished to live exactly as he liked, doing whatever he thought was best for him. -- Robert A. Heinlein
But it's a hell of a note when you can't even kill a dragon and feel lighthearted afterwards. -- Robert A. Heinlein
the government' - that's too sweeping a term. 'The government' is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not 'the government' - but what individuals? -- Robert A. Heinlein
The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
[A person], having no self-respect, needs and demands a show of public respect. -- Robert A. Heinlein
That's what I was trying to find out when we were rushed off on this damned safari. They have unusual intestinal flora and it may have something to do with that. But I think it has to do with the fact that they never stop growing. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It doesn't make sense. Or, rather, it makes just one kind of sense. Hanky-panky. Ben is as used to hanky-panky as a bride is to kisses. He didn't get to be one of the best winchells in the business through playing his cards face up. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Formal courtesy between husband and wife is even more important than it is between strangers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Either way, I have no wish to disturb a man sleeping in a gutter; I assume until proved otherwise that he belongs there. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much ... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Have you ever noticed how much they look like orchids? lovely! -- Robert A. Heinlein
When he kisses you he isn't doing anything else. You're his whole universe, and the moment is eternal because he doesn't have any plans and isn't going anywhere. Just kissing you ... it's overwhelming. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights' . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Once there was a race, quite unlike the human race - quite. I have no way of describing to you what they looked like or how they lived, but they had one characteristic you can understand: they were creative. The creating and enjoying of works of art was their occupation and their reason for being. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you're not too busy this evening, why don't you bring your soft shoes and your pads over to officers' row and we'll go waltzing Matilda? Say about eight o'clock." "Yes, sir." "That's not an order, that's an invitation. If you really are slowing down, -- Robert A. Heinlein
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor. -- Robert A. Heinlein
That was smart, that was engineering: never reinvent something that you can buy down the street. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you got good elective officials in your day, it was a happy accident, better than you deserved. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Small change can often be found under seat cushions. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Are you trying to tell all of us we have a bad signal-to-noise ratio? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so. -- Robert A. Heinlein
His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I pity the poverty of your wealth. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I believe in - I am proud to belong to - the United States. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Specialization is for insects ... The race of man? He's a whole other creature. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Peace is an extension of war by political means. Plenty of elbow-room is pleasanter
and much safer. -- Robert A. Heinlein
To be court-martialed - for any reason - is eight times as bad for an officer as for an enlisted man. Offenses which will get privates kicked out (maybe with lashes, possibly without) rate death in an officer. Better never to have been born! -- Robert A. Heinlein
Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That's a law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Roman matrons used to say to their sons: 'Come back with your shield or on it.' Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome ... (but not before it created an Empire that changed the world -EM). -- Robert A. Heinlein
It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Being kissed by Wyoming Knott is more definite than being married to most women. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Most gods have the morals of a spoiled child. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Horace was a nice little guy who looked like one of his own baboons; he turned me over to a Doctor Vargas who was a specialist in exotic biologies
the same Vargas who was on the Second Venus Expedition. He told me what had happened and I looked at the gibbons, meantime rearranging my prejudices. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I think you were telling the truth, Jill. But a dream is a true experience of a sort and so is a hypnotic delusion. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Butterflies are self propelled flowers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
As for logic and internal consistency, these mundane rules do not apply to sacred writings and never have ... -- Robert A. Heinlein
Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on ... as long as the women and children are saved. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If I had found out anything, it was that they could print it faster than I could study it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Because the world has gone nutty and art always paints the spirit of its times -- Robert A. Heinlein
Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Spacemen die if they stay in one place. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse, -- Robert A. Heinlein
More people worry themselves to death than bleed to death. -- Robert A. Heinlein
People who are busy and happy don't write diaries; they are too busy living. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It was equally imperative that this chain of reactions should always tend to dampen, to die out. It must not build up, or the uranium mass would explode within a time interval too short to be measured by any means whatsoever. Nor would there be anyone left to measure it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime - and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Harshaw held that certain feet were made for stepping on, in order to improve the breed, promote the general welfare, and minimize the ancient insolence of office; he had seen at once that Heinrich had such feet. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it's more sanitary. -- Robert A. Heinlein
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is no such thing as a humane war. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Every citizen is free to perform any act which does not hamper the equal freedom of another. No law shall forbid the performance of any act, which does not damage the physical or economic welfare of any other person. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but
" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. -- Robert A. Heinlein
What statute was violated, if any, in turning a man exactly ninety degrees from everything else? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If possible,
leave room for your enemy
to become your friend. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is no such thing as Just a cat. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It's better to copulate than not. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Responsibility cannot be shared. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Is a virus self-aware? Nyet. How about oyster? I doubt it. A cat? Almost certainly. A human? Don't know about you, tovarishch, but I am. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Each sunrise is a precious jewel ... for it may never be followed by its sunset. -- Robert A. Heinlein
write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. Title -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Ben, why should anybody want that much power?"
"Why does a moth fly toward light? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Youse guys think this deleted outfit is a blankety-blank nursery. Well, it ain't! See? - Remark attributed to a Hellenic corporal before the walls of Troy, 1194 B.C. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Don't anybody mention ice skating; Grandmaw is too old and frail and it wouldn't be polite. Hilda, you suggest dominoes and we'll all chime in - Grandmaw likes dominoes. We'll go skating some other time. Okay, kids?" Jubal -- Robert A. Heinlein
Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Jubal waved the man back. "Private," he said firmly. "Family matter. Go have a drink." "Whose family?" "A death in yours, if you insist. Scat! -- Robert A. Heinlein
I'm too much old-timer to be rude to a woman no matter what - they have so much of what we have none of. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals ... I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for
if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Africa and Europe responded more sensibly but differently. Life has never been sacred in Africa and those who went sight-seeing on targets got little bleeding-heart treatment. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy. -- Robert A. Heinlein
People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin
a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox. -- Robert A. Heinlein
But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It seems to me that the secret of true happiness in life is to know what you are and then be content to be that, in style, head up and proud, and not yearn to be something else ... -- Robert A. Heinlein
He ate what was set before him -- Robert A. Heinlein
If I had a Boy Scout I could make a fire by rubbing his hind legs together. -- Robert A. Heinlein
One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A "critic" is a man who creates nothing ... -- Robert A. Heinlein
I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not -- Robert A. Heinlein
They were all three amazingly beautiful; they were also amazingly good secretaries. In Harshaw's opinion the principle of least action required that utility and beauty be combined. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Working because you want to is the best sort of play. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark. -- Robert A. Heinlein
They flew her," Matt pointed out. "Sure they did - and my hat's off to them. But it takes heroes to fly a box as primitive as this and I'm not the hero type. -- Robert A. Heinlein
An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes. -- Robert A. Heinlein
We have our hands, we have our brains, we have the challenge all around us, and we have within (from whatever source) the will to strive. That is enough; there is no need to assert 'belief' in that which we do not, as yet, know. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Fulfillment in life is loving a good woman and killing a bad man. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Listen, son. Most women are damn fools and children. But they've got more range then we've got. The brave ones are braver, the good ones are better - and the vile ones are viler, for that matter. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Specialisation is for insects! -- Robert A. Heinlein
Apparently Blank thinks I am a nice accommodating guy, please explain to him that I am a son of a bitch -- 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. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I am all that I grok. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science for the few who are competent to practice it. It depends on correct organisation and above all, on communications. -- Robert A. Heinlein
She hesitated slightly. "I've seen what was called telekinesis with dice - but I'm no mathematician and I could not testify that what I saw was telekinesis." "Hell's bells, you wouldn't testify that the sun had risen if the day was cloudy. -- Robert A. Heinlein
God forbid that I should ever be a good influence on anybody. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful
just stupid.) -- Robert A. Heinlein
Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?" "I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Belief gets in the way of learning. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is solemn satisfaction in doing the best you can for eight billion people. Perhaps their lives have no cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Please don't invent a debt that does not exist, or next you will be trying to feel gratitude - and that is the treacherous first step toward complete moral degradation. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The greatest productive force is human selfishness. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Son, the phrase is self-contradictory; "sense" is never "common". -- Robert A. Heinlein
Budget the luxuries first. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I happen to be of an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman
which means I can be a real revolving son of a bitch when it suits me. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy can survive anything except Democrats -- Robert A. Heinlein
Harshaw was working as hard as he ever worked. Most of his mind was occupied with watching pretty girls do pretty things with sun and water; -- Robert A. Heinlein
You don't pay back, you pay forward. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens. -- Robert A. Heinlein
To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer. -- Robert A. Heinlein
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Was the sort of jerk who would entice a young girl with candy and consider it a smart operation. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Could dump two Chinee down in one of our maria and they would get rich selling rocks to each other while raising twelve kids. Then a Hindu would sell retail stuff he got from them wholesale
below cost at a fat profit. We got along. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Gulliver's Travels sardonically proposed that Irish babies be fattened for English tables; -- Robert A. Heinlein
I'm afraid of coaching, of writer's classes, of writer's magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble - you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step. -- Robert A. Heinlein
God made alcohol and he made feet - and he made 'em so you could put 'em together and be happy! -- Robert A. Heinlein
I object to conscription the way a lobster objects to boiling water: it may be his finest hour but it's not his choice. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is
so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Spaceships are for acrobats who are also mathematicians. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat. -- Robert A. Heinlein
As for the tank, not only is it unAmerican and probably subversive to eat without watching stereo but also the racket from it would interfere even with a directional mike aimed at us from a distance . . . -- Robert A. Heinlein
Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I did the only really brave thing I have ever done in my life: I inched forward. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to 'civil master.' -- Robert A. Heinlein
Angeles was safe from invasion; the invaders wouldn't find a place to park - I -- Robert A. Heinlein
Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan? -- Robert A. Heinlein
It was a belt canteen of flexible synthetic divided into half-litre pockets. The weight was taken by shoulder straps and a tube ran up the left suspender, ending in a nipple near his mouth, so that he might drink without taking it off. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious. -- Robert A. Heinlein
All human behavior, all human motivations, all man's hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind's tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The future is better than the past. Despite the crepe hangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands ... with tools ... with horse sense and science and engineering. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In a family argument, if it turns out you are right, apologize at once. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Men on the surface of a planet are as helpless against men in spaceships as a man would be trying to conduct a rock-throwing fight from the bottom of a well. The man at the top of the well has gravity working for him. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you do not believe that a man will commit murder for one can of tomatoes, then you have never been hungry. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive and unpredictable. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In the course of nearly a century of gusty living he had been broke many times, had several times been wealthier than he now was; he regarded both conditions as he did shifts in the weather, and never counted his change. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I don't know Who is cranking; I'm pleased He doesn't stop. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved
if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I hope he's just a scoundrel . . . because a saint can stir up ten times as much mischief as a scoundrel. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Answered his telephone himself if he happened to be at hand when it signalled because each call offered good odds that he would be justified in being gratifyingly rude to some stranger for daring to invade his privacy without cause - "cause" by Harshaw's definition, not by the stranger's. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A motion to adjourn is always in order. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When I don't understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just
as math is the key
and we will survive or founder, depending on how
well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to
me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Marriage is a psychological condition, not a civil contract and a license. Once a marriage is dead, it is dead, and it begins to stink faster than a dead fish. -- Robert A. Heinlein
As it says in the Bible, God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically. -- Robert A. Heinlein
But, to tell the truth, a soldier doesn't notice a war much more than a civilian does, except his own tiny piece of it and that just on the days it is happening. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A verbalizing race has words for every old concept . . . and creates new words or new definitions for old words whenever a new concept comes along. Always! A nervous system that is able to verbalize cannot avoid verbalizing; it's automatic. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I never do anything I don't want to. Nor does anyone, but in my case I know it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
My old man taught me two things: 'Mind own business' and 'Always cut cards.' -- Robert A. Heinlein
One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The lessons of history teach us - if the lessons of history teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us. -- Robert A. Heinlein
She might get high enough to crash - no higher. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Jill, of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time. -- Robert A. Heinlein
In the eighty or ninety years I have given to this subject, trying to trace out the meanderings of their twisty little minds, the only thing that I have learned for certain about women is that when a gal is gonna, she's gonna. All a man can do is cooperate with the inevitable. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Specialization is for insects. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Everybody else specializes. Daddy knows everything, and he puts the pieces together. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Always store beer in a dark place. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion ... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself - ultimate cost for perfect value. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The death rate is the same for us as for anybody ... one person, one death, sooner or later. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Magic is not science, it is a collection of ways to do things ways that work but often we don't know why. -- Robert A. Heinlein
From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit. -- Robert A. Heinlein
No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it's better to laugh than cry. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Terra had climbed well beyond that which its -- Robert A. Heinlein
Do this. Don't do that. Stay back in line. Where's tax receipt? Fill out form. Let's see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead - but first get permit. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The less respect an older person deserves the more certain he is to demand it from anyone younger. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The very idea that the Chief would let anybody expose himself to danger in his place is-well, I ought to slap your face; that's what I ought to do! -- Robert A. Heinlein
Men are not potatoes! -- Robert A. Heinlein
We organized First and Second Volunteer Defense Gunners of Free Luna-two regiments so that First could snub lowly Second and Second could be jealous of First. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it - it keeps him upright. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Have time to take out your soul and look at it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Death is the lot of us all, and the only way that the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all Eternity. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Analogy is even slipperier than logic. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Money is a powerful aphrodisiac but flowers work almost as well. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I miss you dreadfully! -- Robert A. Heinlein
The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Everything and anything about a culture can be inferred from the shape of its language - and -- Robert A. Heinlein
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual" - find out how he feels about astrology. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into-that's the way we're built and I assume that there's some reason for that. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs - sex especially. When they are growing up, they are nerve ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any invasion of their privacy. Oh, sure, they'll make mistakes - but that's their business, not yours. (You made your own mistakes, did you not?) -- Robert A. Heinlein
Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part ... and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When, after a week, Jubal had had no other message, he sent a stat care of Ben's office: "What
the hell are you doing?" Ben's answer came back, somewhat delayed: "Studying Martian and the rules for
hopscotch -- fraternally yours -- Ben. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Ability is a wonderful thing, but its value is greatly enhanced by dependability. Ability implies repeatability and accountability. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Light-months - and it was now possible to infer by parainterferometric methods that the star (ZD9817, or simply "our" star) had planets of some sort. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A hero must hero. -- Robert A. Heinlein
My only regret involved the sad knowledge that I could not handle the amount of alcohol I would have enjoyed. Easy is the descent into Hell. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When the citizens of a nation will no longer volunteer to defend it, then it is probably not worth saving. No nation has the right to survive with conscript troops, and in the long run, no nation ever has. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Captain, that's not your style; you don't want to make money, you simply want to have money - in order to spend it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
How is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in his profession if his victim fails to cooperate? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Nothing gives life more zest that running for your life. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness. -- Robert A. Heinlein
You can die anyplace. They've never managed to regulate that. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I am not going to talk about religious beliefs, but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I often calculate odds on horse races; the civil service computermen frequently program such requests. But the results are so at variance with expectations that I have concluded either that the data is too meager, or the horses or riders are not honest. Possibly all three. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When you're rich, you don't have friends; you just have endless acquaintances. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I'm not feisty. But when you're as small as I am and female if you don't stand up for your rights, you're sure to be pushed around by big, hairy, smelly men with delusions about male superiority. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If tempted by something that feels "altruistic," examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it! -- Robert A. Heinlein
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Getting a problem analyzed is two-thirds of solving it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
He does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being 'frank'. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through intelligent application of science. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone? -- Robert A. Heinlein
Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Spacemen - men who work in space, pilots and jetmen and astrogators and such - are men who like a few million miles of elbow room. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards. -- Robert A. Heinlein
One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ... and accepts his sentence undismayed. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A man who marries at my age isn't taking a wife, he's indenturing a nurse. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The average bloke ... hates and fears all freedom, not only for others but for himself, and stamps it out wherever possible. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Peace is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence - unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It comes from exercising care in the choice of parents. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Take big bites. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. -- Robert A. Heinlein
An armed man need not fight. -- Robert A. Heinlein
But the physical danger was judged to be less important than the psychological stresses. Eight humans, crowded together like monkeys for almost three Terran years, had better get along much better than humans usually did. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When one teaches, two learn. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The Stone trembled and threw herself outward bound, toward Saturn. In her train followed hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of thousands of restless, rolling Stones ... to Saturn ... to Uranus, to Pluto ... rolling on out to the stars ... outward bound to the ends of the Universe. -- Robert A. Heinlein
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion - ie., none to speak of -- Robert A. Heinlein
Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth. -- Robert A. Heinlein
An invention is something that was "impossible" up to then that's why governments grant patents. -- Robert A. Heinlein
nakedness is strictly forbidden.") -- Robert A. Heinlein
The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The stars incline, but do not impel. -- Robert A. Heinlein
There are only five things really worth drawing; four of them are pretty girls and the fifth is cats. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It's (Politics) rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But it's the only sport for grownups. -- Robert A. Heinlein
My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity ... and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Yes, sir, there are things to see and do on the French Riviera without spending money. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Hmm...which one of us has leprosy?."
"Both of us. Jill I'm a newspaperman. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Abstract knowledge is always useful, sooner or later. -- Robert A. Heinlein
I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth
then shut up. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A pacifist male is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described "pacifists" are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger. -- Robert A. Heinlein
When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The Mother Thing makes our world. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don't get any argument but you don't get results either. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Sir, talking with a Martian is like talking with an echo. You don't get argument but you don't get results. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith. -- Robert A. Heinlein
English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The fact that Ben retained Cavendish shows how seriously he took the matter; you don't hunt rabbits with an elephant gun. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse
and without examining evidence which their "common sense" told them was impossible. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It is what it is;...hit,shift, and rotate;... roll with the punch -- Robert A. Heinlein
I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes. -- Robert A. Heinlein
The meek shall inherit the earth - a 6 foot plot above them. -- Robert A. Heinlein
A community where everyone is a ruthless murderer, with handy access to death-dealing devices, is a very polite community. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person's behavior. The most you or any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself. -- Robert A. Heinlein
If I don't start having service I'm going to swap you all for a dog and shoot the dog. -- Robert A. Heinlein
