Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.

~ 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

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

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Customs, morals--is there a difference?

~ 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. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Oh, you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay attention if it's free.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Belief gets in the way of learning.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

She found as always that words on paper proved themselves, they were so beautifully true.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.I miss you dreadfully!

~ Robert A. Heinlein

I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest.

~ 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

In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.I miss you dreadfully!

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant nothing would. No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.

~ 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

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

He never once repeated himself and he never used either profanity or obscenity. (I learned later that he saved those for very special occasions, which this wasn’t.) But he described our shortcomings, physical, mental, moral, and genetic, in great and insulting detail.But somehow I was not insulted; I became greatly interested in studying his command of language. I wished that we had had him on our debate team.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but 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

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

…the greatest danger to man in space was man himself.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . 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.We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is.

~ 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 a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

~ 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

Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.

~ 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 way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.

~ 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