Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

502 Sourced Quotes

He seeks order, not truth. Suppose truth defies order, will he accept it? Will you? I think not.

Robert A. Heinlein
It is the most indecent outfit I've ever seen, with no other purpose than to excite lewd, libidinous, lascivious, licentious, lecherous, lustful longings in the loins of Lotharios.
Isn't that the purpose of clothing?
Well... aside from protection—yes.

Robert A. Heinlein
I don't think Father Hugo is any more mistaken than the most learned theologian and he might be closer to the truth. Jacob, I don't think anyone knows Who's in charge.

Robert A. Heinlein
A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.

Robert A. Heinlein
Some people insist that mediocre is better than best. They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!

Robert A. Heinlein
The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."

Robert A. Heinlein
I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.

Robert A. Heinlein
I'm not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool.

Robert A. Heinlein
A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.

Robert A. Heinlein
I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.

Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

Robert A. Heinlein
Another ingredient in a happy marriage: Budget the luxuries first!

Robert A. Heinlein
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset in part by Brewster's Factor: that's engineering.

Robert A. Heinlein
Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.

Robert A. Heinlein
This is the great day. This is the greatest event in all the history of the human race, up to this time. That is — today is New Year's Day of the Year One. If we don't change the calendar, historians will do so. The human race — this is our change, our puberty rite, bar mitzvah, confirmation, from the change of our infancy into adulthood for the human race. And we're going to go on out, not only to the Moon, to the stars; we're going to spread. I don't know that the United States is going to do it; I hope so. I have — I'm an American myself; I want it to be done by us. But in any case, the human race is going to do it, it's utterly inevitable: we're going to spread through the entire universe.

Robert A. Heinlein
Money is the sincerest of all flattery. Women love to be flattered. So do men.

Robert A. Heinlein
There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into-that's the way we're built and I assume that there's some reason for that.

Robert A. Heinlein
Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.

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
In this complex world, science, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going. If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through intelligent application of science.

Robert A. Heinlein
From the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which over crowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness.

Robert A. Heinlein
And suddenly I knew I was people and could not stop laughing.

Robert A. Heinlein
The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for—if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most.

Robert A. Heinlein
I knew that the stupidest students, the silliest professors, and the worst bull courses are concentrated in schools of education.

Robert A. Heinlein
I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies.

Robert A. Heinlein
Do-gooding is like treating hemophilia - the real cure is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death...before they breed more hemophiliacs.

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

Robert A. Heinlein
Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?

Robert A. Heinlein
Yes, maybe it's just one colossal big joke with no point to it. Lazarus stood up and stretched and scratched his ribs. But I can tell you this, Andy, whatever the answers are, here's one monkey that's going to keep on climbing, and looking around him to see what he can see, as long as the tree holds out.

Robert A. Heinlein
Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.

Robert A. Heinlein