Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

502 Sourced Quotes

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

Robert A. Heinlein
It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired.

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. 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
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

Robert A. Heinlein
If I had a Boy Scout I could make a fire by rubbing his hind legs together.

Robert A. Heinlein
You're in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish.

Robert A. Heinlein
A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!

Robert A. Heinlein
Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together.

Robert A. Heinlein
First they junked the concept of justice. Examined semantically justice has no referent—there is no observable phenomenon in the space-time-matter continuum to which one can point, and say, This is justice. Science can deal only with that which can be observed and measured. Justice is not such a matter; therefore it can never have the same meaning to one as to another; any noises said about it will only add to confusion.
But damage, physical or economic, can be pointed to and measured. Citizens were forbidden by the Covenant to damage another. Any act not leading to damage, physical or economic, to some particular person, they declared to be lawful.

Robert A. Heinlein
Sex is a learned art, as much so as ice skating or tight wire walking or fancy diving; it is not instinct. Oh, two animals couple by instinct, but it takes intelligence and patient willingness to turn copulation into a high and lively art.

Robert A. Heinlein
Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

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
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.

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
His bow to me must have been calculated on a slide rule; it suggested that I was about to be Supreme Minister but was not quite there yet, that I was his senior but nevertheless a civilian — then subtract five degrees for the fact that he wore the Emperor's aiguillette on his right shoulder.

Robert A. Heinlein
I wish Doc Pickering was here.
Yeah, and if fish had feet, they'd be mice.

Robert A. Heinlein
It's a long story. Want a refill?" "No, let's start the steak. Where's the button?" "Right here." "Well, push it." "Me? You offered to cook." "Ben Caxton, I will lie here and starve before I will get up to push a button six inches from your finger" "As you wish." He pressed the button. "But don't forget who cooked dinner.

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
When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.

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
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
One can't expect logic from males; they think with their testicles and act from their emotions.

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
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
Can I trust you, my friend?
If you can't, then what is my assurance worth?

Robert A. Heinlein