Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (138 Quotes)



    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.



    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.







    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.





    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.





    Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

    Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

    How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.

    One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

    Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result. 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.

    A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be... more than that he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armidillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body.

    I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

    One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

    If you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. and, if you shake him, he bites.

    Everything in excess To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.



    Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid).

    A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

    Was there ever a time when the majority was right Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A

    To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.

    There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

    An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.



    No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.

    Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.

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

    But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.

    When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

    It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

    All's fair in love and war-what a contemptible lie Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A

    A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain - then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system.

    The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

    Of all the strange crimes that human beings have legislated of nothing, blasphemy is the most amazing - with obscenity and indecent exposure fighting it out for the second and third place.


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