Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

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

~ 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

The Universe was a damned silly place at best . . . but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings just happened to be some atoms that just happened to get together in configurations which just happened to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations just happened to possess self-awareness and that two such just happened to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside. No, Jubal would not buy the just happened theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. 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

But one way or another competing and weeding takes place . . . or a race goes downhill.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

You can't believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside.

~ 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

The less respect an older person deserves the more certain he is to demand it from anyone younger.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

. . . 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

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

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

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

there used to be, dirtside, a legal defenses called diminished capacity and not guilty by reason on insanity. These concepts would bewilder a Loonie. In Luna City a man would necessarily be of diminished mental capacity to even think about rape; to carry one out would be the strongest possible proof of insanity - but among Loonies such mental disorders would not gain a rapist any sympathy. loonies do not psychoanalyze a rapist; they kill him. Now. Fast. Brutally.

~ 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

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

Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Many problems can be solved by a man not frightened by them.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

~ 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

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

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you're ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he's as happy as a worm in an apple - asleep.

~ 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

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Democracy is a poor system, the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

…majority rule gives the ruthless strong man plenty of elbow room to oppress his fellows.

~ 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

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

Theology is never any help, it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

~ 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

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

Anything which is physically possible can be made financially possible, if the people of a state desire it.

~ 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

Were you born stupid, Heinrich, or did you have to study?

~ 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

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

Never try to outstubborn a cat.

~ 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

Never try to out-stubborn a cat.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The coldest depth of Hell is reserved for people who abandon kittens.

~ 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

Never tease an old dog, he might have one bite left.

~ Robert A. Heinlein