Robert A. Heinlein - Wrong Quotes

14 Sourced Quotes

View all Robert A. Heinlein Quotes
The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, "I don't know", then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

Robert A. Heinlein
I can't evaluate my opinions of right and wrong because I learned them from my parents and haven't lived long enough to have formed opinions in disagreement with theirs.

Robert A. Heinlein
Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called "morals." Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.
You, too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul — and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code... so automatically your stomach did flip-flops... and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong. Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal.

Robert A. Heinlein
Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.

Robert A. Heinlein
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.

Robert A. Heinlein
You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but—if you will pardon my saying so—all wrong.

Robert A. Heinlein
Don't pay any attention to what she says. Half of it's always wrong and she doesn't mean the rest.

Robert A. Heinlein
How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show — it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

Robert A. Heinlein
You can go wrong by being skeptical as readily as by being too trusting.

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

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
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
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
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