Top 682 Quotes & Sayings by Robert A. Heinlein
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American writer Robert A. Heinlein.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.
Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
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.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.
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.
Love is 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.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.
They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.
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.
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.
I never learned from a man who agreed with me.
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.
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. 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.
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
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.
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.
The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.
Never insult anyone by accident.
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
One man's 'magic' is another man's engineering. 'Supernatural' is a null word.
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
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.
Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
The lessons of history teach us - if the lessons of history teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Love your country, but never trust its government.
Never appeal to a man's 'better nature.' He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
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.
At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different--in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.
You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.
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.
Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.
Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.
The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.
A fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.
Democracy can survive anything except Democrats
The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That's a personal evaluation, of course.
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.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
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