Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough for Love (1973)

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

Robert A. Heinlein
If tempted by something that feels 'altruistic,' examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!

Robert A. Heinlein
A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.

Robert A. Heinlein
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.

Robert A. Heinlein
Heroism' often consists in keeping your head in an emergency and doing the best you can with what you have instead of panicking and being shot in the tail. People who fight this way win more battles than do intentional heroes; a glory hound often throws away the lives of his mates as well as his own.

Robert A. Heinlein
It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired.

Robert A. Heinlein
Only a sadistic scoundrel-or a fool-tells the bald truth on social occasions.

Robert A. Heinlein
Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.

Robert A. Heinlein
Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.

Robert A. Heinlein
No man owns his genes; he's merely their custodian. They are passed to him willy-nilly in the meiotic dance; he passes them along to others through the same blind chances.

Robert A. Heinlein
"Mutation" is never an explanation; it is simply a name for an observed fact.

Robert A. Heinlein
Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime - and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.

Robert A. Heinlein
Formal courtesy between husband and wife is even more important than it is between strangers.

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

Robert A. Heinlein
Sex is a learned art, as much so as ice skating or tight wire walking or fancy diving; it is not instinct. Oh, two animals couple by instinct, but it takes intelligence and patient willingness to turn copulation into a high and lively art.

Robert A. Heinlein
Oh, the hell with! — it did not change the statistical outcome.

Robert A. Heinlein
No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad universe.

Robert A. Heinlein
Anyone can see a forest fire. Skill lies in sniffing the first smoke.

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
Roman matrons used to say to their sons: 'Come back with your shield or on it.' Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome... (but not before it created an Empire that changed the world -EM).

Robert A. Heinlein
Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.

Robert A. Heinlein
Most "scientists" are bottle washers and button sorters.

Robert A. Heinlein
I don't "believe" in anything. I know certain things — little things, not the Nine Billion Names of God — from experience. But I have no beliefs. Belief gets in the way of learning.

Robert A. Heinlein
Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman's breasts; it enhances their charm by making them look lived in and happy.

Robert A. Heinlein
He shut up, realizing that grim old Mother Nature, red of tooth and claw, invariably punished damn fools who tried to ignore Her or repeal Her ordinances.

Robert A. Heinlein
Son, that phrase is self-contradictory; "sense" is never "common".

Robert A. Heinlein
When the need arises - and it does - you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don't farm it out, that doesn't make it nicer, it makes it worse.

Robert A. Heinlein
It is possible that the percentage of honest and competent whores is higher than that of plumbers and much higher than that of lawyers. And enormously higher than that of professors.

Robert A. Heinlein
Crazy — a nonscientific term meaning that the person to whom one applies that label has a world picture differing from the accepted one.

Robert A. Heinlein
Take care of the cojones and the frijoles will take care of themselves. Try to have getaway money - but don't be fanatic about it.

Robert A. Heinlein