Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (138 Quotes)

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.

Gratitude is a euphemism for resentment.

My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself.

With just a touch more self confidence and a liberal helping of ignorance I could have been a famous evangelist.

We learned not to waste ammo even on warriors except in self-protection

He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power.

No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own . . . and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing . . . is one that they can't or won't entertain.

Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.

You got the impression that he never needed to sleep - just ten-thousand-mile checkups and dust him off occasionally.

He was delighted to recognize his own human name on two of the papers; he always got an odd thrill out of reading it, as if he were two places at once.

Stinky says women should be obscene but not heard.

Certain types of loudmouthism should be a capital offense among decent people.

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.

He's an honest politician--he stays bought.

Straining at gnats and swallowing camels is a required course in all law schools.

Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.

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.

He's as weird as snake's suspenders but sweet as a stolen kiss, too.

Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!

Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor.

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

Audacity, always audacity - soundest principal of strategy.

His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.

Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don't get any argument but you don't get results either.

Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.

But, do you know, once you get used to it's rather cute. I mean, if a girl looks alright to start with, she still looks alright with her head smooth.

Because the world has gone nutty and art always paints the spirit of its times

I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.

That's a subject as safe as being in favor of Christmas.

One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed.

Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don't walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don't know how to describe it, but it's much more complex and utterly delightful. They don't move just their feet; everything moves and in different directions . . . and all of it graceful.

Being sorry won't get you into heaven. Get happy, son. Get that old spring into your step and stay on your toes.

I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.

The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger.

The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.

But one way or another competing and weeding takes place . . . or a race goes downhill.

If I don't start having service I'm going to swap you all for a dog and shoot the dog.

The golden sunshine of Italy congealed into tears. Here's to alcoholic brotherhood ... much more suited to the frail human soul, if any, than any other sort.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?

Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit

If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.

The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up.

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

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.

Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest.

The verdict to be passed on the third planet around Sol was never in doubt.

Women talk when they want to. Or don't.