Robert A. Heinlein Quotes & Sayings

Those who refuse to support and defend the state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be considered "murder" in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be "Using deadly weapons within city limits," or "Creating a traffic hazard," or other misdemeanor. — Robert A. Heinlein

Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell. — 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

Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork. — 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

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

Writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn't take any talent or training — Robert A. Heinlein

You can die anyplace. They've never managed to regulate that. — Robert A. Heinlein

Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit — Robert A. Heinlein

If you got good elective officials in your day, it was a happy accident, better than you deserved. — Robert A. Heinlein

Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me. — Robert A. Heinlein

Yes, sir, there are things to see and do on the French Riviera without spending money. — Robert A. Heinlein

He shall rule them with a rod of iron. - Revelations II:25 — Robert A. Heinlein

We learned not to waste ammo even on warriors except in self-protection — 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

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

To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful. — Robert A. Heinlein

Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage. — Robert A. Heinlein

Behind every mystery lies another mystery. — Robert A. Heinlein

I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write ...
... writing is antisocial. It's as solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone ... and not even know that he's doing it. As writers' wives and husbands often learn to their horror ...
... there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, 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. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all ... and, if you shake him at this stage, he bites ... — Robert A. Heinlein

To Mahmoud, Harshaw looked like a museum exhibit of what he thought of as a "Yank" - vulgar, dressed too informally for the occasion, loud, probably ignorant and almost certainly provincial. A professional man, too, which made it worse, as in Dr. Mahmoud's experience most American professional men were under-educated and narrow, mere technicians. — Robert A. Heinlein

His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency. — Robert A. Heinlein

On two subjects the overwhelming majority of people regarded their own opinions as Absolute Truth, and sincerely believed that anyone who disagreed with them was immoral, outrageous, sinful, sacrilegious, offensive, intolerable, stupid, illogical, treasonable, actionable, against the public interest, ridiculous, and obscene. The two subjects were (of course) sex and religion. — 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

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn ... they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything
obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. — Robert A. Heinlein

Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accept the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay-and claims a halo for his dishonesty. — Robert A. Heinlein

Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together. — Robert A. Heinlein

Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events. — 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

A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain. — 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

Home is the place in deepest space
Where star etched memories burn,
Home is that sigh for a color of sky
and a will to return. — 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

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

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

Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse, — 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

Never pick up a stray kitten ... unless you've already made up your mind to be owned by it. — Robert A. Heinlein

I've been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they don't give kissing their whole attention. They can't. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus - or their chances of making the gal - or their own techniques in kissing - or maybe worry about jobs, or money, or will husband or papa or the neighbors catch on. Mike doesn't have technique ... but when Mike 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. — Robert A. Heinlein

Smith used English as one might use a code book, with tedious and imperfect translation for each symbol. — Robert A. Heinlein

Everybody is equal. Everybody! That's the law."
"They are? Only from on top. — 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

Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith. — 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

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 supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. — Robert A. Heinlein

There is no safety this side of the grave — 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

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier. — Robert A. Heinlein

I think the major problem in growing up is to become sophisticated without becoming cynical. — Robert A. Heinlein

The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation. — Robert A. Heinlein

Never insult anyone by accident. — Robert A. Heinlein

Since sovereign franchise is the ultimate in human authority, we insure that all who wield it accept the ultimate in social responsibility - we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life - and lose it, if need be - to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated to the ultimate authority a human can exert. — Robert A. Heinlein

Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them. — Robert A. Heinlein

Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you. — Robert A. Heinlein

Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. — Robert A. Heinlein

Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure "good" government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare - most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the "backseat driver" syndrome. — Robert A. Heinlein

What distinguishes Buddhism from any other faith I've studied - from most human beings, really - is that the people who face the wall and the people who face away from it have never fought a war over it. They're never going to agree ... but they feel no need to. Buddha himself is supposed to have said, People with opinions just go around bothering each other. — Robert A. Heinlein

In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is to never let them find out. — 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

God made alcohol and he made feet - and he made 'em so you could put 'em together and be happy! — 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

Hurry was not a concept that could be symbolized in the Martian language and therefore must be presumed to be unthinkable. Speed, velocity, simultaneity, acceleration, and other mathematical abstractions having to do with the pattern of eternity were part of Martian mathematics, but not of Martian emotion. — Robert A. Heinlein

Everything and anything about a culture can be inferred from the shape of its language - and — Robert A. Heinlein

His joy was somewhat sullied by immediate awareness that his brother did not fully share it . . . in truth, he seemed more distressed than was possible save in one about to discorporate because of some shameful lack or failure. But Smith had already learned that these creatures, so much like himself in some ways, could endure emotions dreadful to contemplate and still not die. His Brother Mahmoud underwent a spiritual agony five times daily and not only did not die but had urged the agony on him as a needful thing. His Brother Captain van Tromp suffered terrifying spasms unpredictably, any one of which should have, by Smith's standards, produced immediate discorporation to end the conflict - yet that brother was still corporate so far as he knew. — Robert A. Heinlein

To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives - such — 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

Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system. — Robert A. Heinlein

Love is what still goes on when you're not horny. — Robert A. Heinlein

The golden sunshine of Italy congealed into tears. Here's to alcoholic brotherhood ... much more suited to the frail human soul, if any, than any other sort. — 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

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it - once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth. — Robert A. Heinlein

They want to use him, make him geek. — Robert A. Heinlein

When I don't understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why. — Robert A. Heinlein

When one teaches, two learn. — Robert A. Heinlein

It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws. — Robert A. Heinlein

Customs, morals--is there a difference? — Robert A. Heinlein

You evaded my question." "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it. — 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

Was the sort of jerk who would entice a young girl with candy and consider it a smart operation. — Robert A. Heinlein

The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable - from table tapping to the superiority of their own children - has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it
especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible. — 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

First is our unbreakable rule that every candidate must be a trained trooper, blooded under fire, a veteran of combat drops. No other army in history has stuck to this rule, although some came close. Most great military schools of the past - Saint Cyr, West Point, Sandhurst, Colorado Springs - didn't even pretend to follow it; they accepted civilian boys, trained them, commissioned them, sent them out with no battle experience to command men . . . and sometimes discovered too late that this smart young 'officer' was a fool, a poltroon, or a hysteric. — Robert A. Heinlein

Dr. Jubal Harshaw, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice, had long attempted to eliminate "hurry" and all related emotions from his pattern. Being aware that he had but a short time left to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in his own immortality, it was his purpose to live each golden moment as if it were eternity - without fear, without hope, but with sybaritic gusto. — Robert A. Heinlein

Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed. — 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

The greatest productive force is human selfishness. — Robert A. Heinlein

Prof is right; more than three people can't decide anything. — 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

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

Don't tell me violence doesn't solve anything. Look at Carthage. — Robert A. Heinlein

The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay. — 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

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

Women will forgive anything. Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago. — Robert A. Heinlein

I pity the poverty of your wealth. — Robert A. Heinlein

I waited. Women talk when they want to. Or don't. — 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

There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. — Robert A. Heinlein

A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive - and nowhere else! - and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts. — Robert A. Heinlein