Robert A. Heinlein - Man Quotes

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In the eighty or ninety years I have given to this subject, trying to trace out the meanderings of their twisty little minds, the only thing that I have learned for certain about women is that when a gal is gonna, she's gonna. All a man can do is cooperate with the inevitable.

Robert A. Heinlein
My old man taught me two things: 'Mind own business' and 'Always cut cards.'

Robert A. Heinlein
A critic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased, he hates all creative people equally.

Robert A. Heinlein
Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.

Robert A. Heinlein
People tend to fall into three psychological types, all differently motivated. There is the type, motivated by economic factors, money... And there is the type motivated by 'face,' or pride. This type is a spender, fighter, boaster, lover, sportsman, gambler; he has a will to power and an itch for glory. And there is the professional type, which claims to follow a code of ethics rather than simply seeking money or glory—priests and ministers, teachers, scientists, medical men, some artists and writers. The idea is that such a man believes that he is devoting his life to some purpose more important than his individual self. You follow me?

Robert A. Heinlein
Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

Robert A. Heinlein
Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.

Robert A. Heinlein
Do you seriously expect to start a rebellion with picayune stuff like that?
It's not picayune stuff, because it acts directly on their emotions, below the logical level. You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic. It doesn't have to be a prejudice about an important matter either.

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
Never appeal to a man's 'better nature'. He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.

Robert A. Heinlein
Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact.

Robert A. Heinlein
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" : but beavers and their dams are.

Robert A. Heinlein
Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination— devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues — which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.

Robert A. Heinlein
Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.

Robert A. Heinlein
The Universe was a silly place at best...but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings 'just happened' to be atoms that 'just happened' to get together in ways which 'just happened' to look like consistent laws and some configurations 'just happened' to possess self-awareness and that two 'just happened' to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.

Robert A. Heinlein
It is impossible for a man to love his wife whole heartedly without loving all women somewhat. I suppose that the converse must be true of women.

Robert A. Heinlein
I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.

Robert A. Heinlein
Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the past with less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on the spot.

Robert A. Heinlein
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.

Robert A. Heinlein
Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is — so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.

Robert A. Heinlein
To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.

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

Robert A. Heinlein
If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.

Robert A. Heinlein
Never encourage a man to cook breakfast; it causes him to wonder if women are necessary. If you always get his breakfast and don't raise controversial issues until after his second cup of coffee, you can get away with murder the rest of the time. They don't notice other odors when they smell bacon.

Robert A. Heinlein
Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That's a law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law.

Robert A. Heinlein
Of course the intellectual class did not notice this for many decades, as an intellectual is a highly educated man who can't do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of the lack.

Robert A. Heinlein
I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.

Robert A. Heinlein
If a man pushes a rock, can he ignore an avalanche that follows?

Robert A. Heinlein
A man who marries at my age isn't taking a wife, he's indenturing a nurse.

Robert A. Heinlein
I trust that I am honest with myself. I know that I am not very sociable and I expect to go on being so; a man capable of creative work has no time to spare for fools who would like to visit.

Robert A. Heinlein