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
A rational anarchist believes that concepts, such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame... as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world... aware that his efforts will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.

Robert A. Heinlein
I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I had sampled them — public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash — but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law's kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything. I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to most children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a good child is one who does not disturb mother's nap and a good man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks!

Robert A. Heinlein
An invention is something that was impossible up to then—that's why governments grant patents.

Robert A. Heinlein
Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.

Robert A. Heinlein
Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool).

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
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

Robert A. Heinlein
I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy... censorship. 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. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

Robert A. Heinlein
I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape.

Robert A. Heinlein
A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

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

Robert A. Heinlein
A man who bets on greed and dishonesty won't be wrong too often.

Robert A. Heinlein
Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - and quickly.

Robert A. Heinlein
Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.

Robert A. Heinlein
Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

Robert A. Heinlein
Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.

Robert A. Heinlein
Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to virgins.

Robert A. Heinlein
Son, suppose you tend to your knitting and I tend to mine.

Robert A. Heinlein
If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?

Robert A. Heinlein
But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Robert A. Heinlein
Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.

Robert A. Heinlein
Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too.

Robert A. Heinlein
I came, I saw, she conquered." The original Latin seems to have been garbled.

Robert A. Heinlein
Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind.

Robert A. Heinlein
Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.

Robert A. Heinlein
Between being 'right' and being kind, I know which way I vote.

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

Robert A. Heinlein
Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost!

Robert A. Heinlein
People who are busy and happy don't write diaries; they are too busy living.

Robert A. Heinlein