Top 100 Heinlein Robert Quotes: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Heinlein Robert

#1. We are the boys who go to a particular place, at H-hour, occupy a designated terrain, stand on it, dig the enemy out of their holes, force them then and there to surrender or die. We're the bloody infantry.

Robert A. Heinlein

#2. 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

#3. I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces
with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything now.

Robert A. Heinlein

#4. Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse,

Robert A. Heinlein

#5. Why don't they make more science fiction movies? The answer to any question starting, Why don't they- is almost always, Money.

Robert A. Heinlein

#6. 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

#7. We're simply trying to survive - and the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible and concentrate on what's possible.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Robert A. Heinlein

#9. When a cat greets you, he makes a big operation of it, bumping, stropping your legs, buzzing like mischief. But when he leaves, he just walks off and never looks back. Cats are smart.

Robert A. Heinlein

#10. Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of single-minded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money.

Robert A. Heinlein

#11. A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive - and nowhere else! - and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.

Robert A. Heinlein

#12. I always get the shakes before a drop.

Robert A. Heinlein

#13. We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.

Robert A. Heinlein

#14. That's what I was trying to find out when we were rushed off on this damned safari. They have unusual intestinal flora and it may have something to do with that. But I think it has to do with the fact that they never stop growing.

Robert A. Heinlein

#15. There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service.

Robert A. Heinlein

#16. The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: "Of course it is none of my business, but
" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.

Robert A. Heinlein

#17. No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart.

Robert A. Heinlein

#18. The best things in history are accomplished by people who get tired of being shoved around.

Robert A. Heinlein

#19. Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way.

Robert A. Heinlein

#20. A family reunion is an effective form of birth control.

Robert A. Heinlein

#21. God made alcohol and he made feet - and he made 'em so you could put 'em together and be happy!

Robert A. Heinlein

#22. Harshaw was working as hard as he ever worked. Most of his mind was occupied with watching pretty girls do pretty things with sun and water;

Robert A. Heinlein

#23. But, Jill, if a thing is sinful on Sunday, it is sinful on Friday - at least it groks that way to an outsider, myself - or perhaps to a man from Mars.

Robert A. Heinlein

#24. Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.

Robert A. Heinlein

#25. Most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers.

Robert A. Heinlein

#26. Africa and Europe responded more sensibly but differently. Life has never been sacred in Africa and those who went sight-seeing on targets got little bleeding-heart treatment.

Robert A. Heinlein

#27. Maybe the whole world held together only when you kept your attention centered on it and believed in it. If you let discrepancies creep in, you began to doubt and it began to go to pieces.

Robert A. Heinlein

#28. What statute was violated, if any, in turning a man exactly ninety degrees from everything else?

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Robert A. Heinlein

#30. Spaceships are for acrobats who are also mathematicians.

Robert A. Heinlein

#31. Uh, all right. Boss, you're infuriating when you're logical!" "Yes, a most uncouth way to argue.

Robert A. Heinlein

#32. If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. (Lazarus Long)

Robert A. Heinlein

#33. It's a shock to have it proved to you that you can't resist seducing yourself.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Robert A. Heinlein

#35. To support his austerely upholstered nest and its rabble staff he put forth minimum effort for maximum return simply because it was easier to be rich than to be poor - Harshaw merely wished to live exactly as he liked, doing whatever he thought was best for him.

Robert A. Heinlein

#36. An air car was just landing in the garden by the pool and beings under it were complaining of injuries and indignities done them. Perhaps this was the trouble he could feel? Grasses were for walking on, flowers and bushes were not - this was a wrongness.

Robert A. Heinlein

#37. Is this Paradise?'
'I can guarantee you that it isn't,' Jubal assured him. 'My taxes are due this week.

Robert A. Heinlein

#38. Age does not bring wisdom, Ben, but it does give perspective ... and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted.

Robert A. Heinlein

#39. Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

Robert A. Heinlein

#40. The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.

Robert A. Heinlein

#41. Learning ... is - also an end in itself.

Robert A. Heinlein

#42. But the physical danger was judged to be less important than the psychological stresses. Eight humans, crowded together like monkeys for almost three Terran years, had better get along much better than humans usually did.

Robert A. Heinlein

#43. Love your country, but never trust its government.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Robert A. Heinlein

#45. I don't pay attention to politics." "You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat." "I don't pay attention to that, either.

Robert A. Heinlein

#46. Of all the creatures on this planet none is more dangerous than a human being.

Robert A. Heinlein

#47. You don't pay back, you pay forward.

Robert A. Heinlein

#48. Dress yourself in heavy fishing waders, put on an overcoat and boxing gloves and a bucket over your head, then have somebody strap two sacks of cement across your shoulders and you will know what a space suit feels like under one gravity.

Robert A. Heinlein

#49. These people who deal in fancification to fool the public think nobody can read and write but themselves.

Robert A. Heinlein

#50. A boy who gets a C- in 'Appreciation of Television' can't be all bad.

Robert A. Heinlein

#51. The saddest thing about ephemerals was that their little lives rarely held time enough for love.

Robert A. Heinlein

#52. Stinky says women should be obscene but not heard.

Robert A. Heinlein

#53. As for logic and internal consistency, these mundane rules do not apply to sacred writings and never have ...

Robert A. Heinlein

#54. Faith is intellectual laziness.

Robert A. Heinlein

#55. Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.

Robert A. Heinlein

#56. I had the unsettling feeling that I had been completely mistaken as to the very nature of the world I was in, as if every part was something wildly different from what it appeared to be ...

Robert A. Heinlein

#57. Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo.

Robert A. Heinlein

#58. Nurse, if she didn't have more money than any person ought to have, you might be tempted to call it senile dementia. As it is, she is in for a rest and a check-up.

Robert A. Heinlein

#59. You're not privileged to call me 'Boss'; you're not tax deductible.

Robert A. Heinlein

#60. The lessons of history teach us - if the lessons of history teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.

Robert A. Heinlein

#61. Some people are ants by nature; they have to work, even when it's useless. Few people have a talent for constructive laziness.

Robert A. Heinlein

#62. The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same.

Robert A. Heinlein

#63. A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.

Robert A. Heinlein

#64. But as a matter of strict fact, did Agnes have any "maternal" in her? When she set her mouth that way, it was hard to see it. Oh shucks, all women had maternal instincts; science had proved that. Well, hadn't they?

Robert A. Heinlein

#65. 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?

Robert A. Heinlein

#66. I never do anything I don't want to. Nor does anyone, but in my case I know it.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Robert A. Heinlein

#68. Writing can be learned, but not taught.

Robert A. Heinlein

#69. The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

Robert A. Heinlein

#70. You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

Robert A. Heinlein

#71. My old man says when it's time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.

Robert A. Heinlein

#72. I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones - by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether universe or a smaller one.

Robert A. Heinlein

#73. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it ... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'.

Robert A. Heinlein

#74. Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels

Robert A. Heinlein

#75. To the everlasting glory of the Infantry -

Robert A. Heinlein

#76. Light-months - and it was now possible to infer by parainterferometric methods that the star (ZD9817, or simply "our" star) had planets of some sort.

Robert A. Heinlein

#77. The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.

Robert A. Heinlein

#78. When it don't rain, the roof don't leak; when it rains, I can't fix it nohow.

Robert A. Heinlein

#79. It takes two to create a heaven, but hell can be accomplished by one.

Robert A. Heinlein

#80. Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings ... but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.

Robert A. Heinlein

#81. In a matter of some generations all the stupid ones will die out and those with your discipline will inherit the Earth

Robert A. Heinlein

#82. He was finding it ruinously expensive to be rich.

Robert A. Heinlein

#83. Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry.

Robert A. Heinlein

#84. Even with Las Vegas giddy around me I felt as alone as Robinson Crusoe.

Robert A. Heinlein

#85. All men are created unequal.

Robert A. Heinlein

#86. Because revolution - armed uprising - requires not only dissatisfaction but aggressiveness. A revolutionist has to be willing to fight and die - or he's just a parlor pink. If you separate out the aggressive ones and make them the sheep dogs, the sheep will never give you trouble.

Robert A. Heinlein

#87. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness.

Robert A. Heinlein

#88. Secrecy begets tyranny.

Robert A. Heinlein

#89. One damn sure thing! - he wasn't going to let them be rough with that Smith lad. He was a nuisance, granted, but he was a nice lad and rather appealing in a helpless, half-witted way.

Robert A. Heinlein

#90. Forgiveness and thanks go hand in hand.

Robert A. Heinlein

#91. Any custom is man-made and is therefore a finite attempt to describe an infinity of relationships. It follows as the night from day that any custom necessarily has its exceptions.

Robert A. Heinlein

#92. Though weather is important while it happens it seems to me to be pretty dull to look back on. You can take descriptions of most any sort of weather out of an almanac and stick them in just anywhere; they'll probably fit.

Robert A. Heinlein