Robert A. Heinlein - Man Quotes

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Some logics get nervous breakdowns. Overloaded phone system behaves like frightened child. Mike did not have upsets, acquired sense of humor instead. Low one. If he were a man, you wouldn't dare stoop over. His idea of thigh-slapper would be to dump you out of bed — or put itch powder in pressure suit.

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
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
I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter.

Robert A. Heinlein
A little more money won't do you any good - because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation, regardless of the amount.

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
All human behavior, all human motivations, all man's hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind's tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.

Robert A. Heinlein
Women seem to have almost unlimited capacity for forgiveness. (Since it is usually a man who needs forgiveness, this must be a racial survival trait.)

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

Robert A. Heinlein
My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.

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

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

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
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