Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

502 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
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
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
Another ingredient in a happy marriage: Budget the luxuries first!

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

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

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
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
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
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
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
Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.

Robert A. Heinlein
He decided to stay in his space suit; explosive decompression didn't appeal to him. Come to think about it, death from old age was his choice.

Robert A. Heinlein
Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.

Robert A. Heinlein
Johnnie, the nice thing about citing God as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove. It's just a matter of selecting the proper postulates, then insisting that your postulates are 'inspired.' Then no one can possibly prove that you are wrong.

Robert A. Heinlein
Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady?" "I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady.

Robert A. Heinlein
Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

Robert A. Heinlein
If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgment.

Robert A. Heinlein
With eternity to draw on there could be no reason for hurrying - 'hurry' was not a concept in Martian.

Robert A. Heinlein
Babies are fun. And they're not much trouble. Feed 'em occasionally, help them when they need it, and love them a lot. That's all there is to it.

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
Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their own, the hard way.

Robert A. Heinlein