Top 100 Heinlein's Quotes

#1. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #8783
#2. You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #12902
#3. The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #23892
#4. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #27613
#5. It's better to copulate than not.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #48617
#6. Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who's boss.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #58114
#7. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #68275
#8. The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #96189
#9. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #136292
#10. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #138839
#11. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #141445
#12. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #147532
#13. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #155477
#14. It's a shock to have it proved to you that you can't resist seducing yourself.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #167371
#15. If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. (Lazarus Long)

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #167758
#16. Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That's a law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #187355
#17. In the eighty or ninety years I have given to this subject, trying to trace out the meanderings of their twisty little minds, the only thing that I have learned for certain about women is that when a gal is gonna, she's gonna. All a man can do is cooperate with the inevitable.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #188030
#18. Oh, you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay attention if it's free.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #194216
#19. Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is
so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #208278
#20. I'm afraid of coaching, of writer's classes, of writer's magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble - you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #236426
#21. There's precious little choice." "There's always a choice! This one is a choice between 'bad' and 'worse - 'which is a difference much more poignant than that between 'good' and 'better.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #239707
#22. One of the big breakthroughs, I think for me, was reading Robert A. Heinlein's four rules of writing, one of which was, 'You must finish what you write.' I never had any problem with the first one, 'You must write' - I was writing since I was a kid. But I never finished what writing.

George R R Martin

Heinlein's Quotes #239941
#23. It took you long enough to answer your phone." "It's my phone, Mr. Secretary. Sometimes I don't answer it at all.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #281350
#24. I took up writing because I needed money. And I continued to write because it's safer than stealing and easier than working.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #284050
#25. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #296467
#26. It's (Politics) rough and sometimes it's dirty and it's always hard work and tedious details. But it's the only sport for grownups.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #308949
#27. Answered his telephone himself if he happened to be at hand when it signalled because each call offered good odds that he would be justified in being gratifyingly rude to some stranger for daring to invade his privacy without cause - "cause" by Harshaw's definition, not by the stranger's.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #315274
#28. It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #325343
#29. Politics is not evil; politics is the human race's most magnificent achievement.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #326665
#30. Congratulations! A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom." "You

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #346150
#31. It's not that easy. You can make omelet from eggs, but not eggs from omelet.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #359803
#32. When he kisses you he isn't doing anything else. You're his whole universe, and the moment is eternal because he doesn't have any plans and isn't going anywhere. Just kissing you ... it's overwhelming.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #378347
#33. Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #413213
#34. He's an honest politician--he stays bought.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #427005
#35. A man who marries at my age isn't taking a wife, he's indenturing a nurse.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #433823
#36. It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #434884
#37. 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.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #441991
#38. There is no such thing as 'social gambling.' Either you are there to cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it
or you're a sucker. If you don't like this choice
don't gamble.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #447679
#39. The very idea that the Chief would let anybody expose himself to danger in his place is-well, I ought to slap your face; that's what I ought to do!

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #461211
#40. I want to spit back at a camel and ask him what he's so sour about. Maybe camels are the real 'Old Ones' on this planet ... and that what is wrong with the place.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #468208
#41. Specialization is for insects ... The race of man? He's a whole other creature.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #469394
#42. Democracy is a poor system; the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #482188
#43. All revelations are personal, that's why all revelations are suspect.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #533983
#44. In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #558478
#45. Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #583219
#46. 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.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #599584
#47. We came here for a quiet, small, informal meeting - strictly business. We find you've turned it into a circus. Well, if you're going to have a circus, you've got to have elephants and there's no two ways about it.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #623130
#48. Marriage is a young man's disaster and an old man's comfort.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #626034
#49. There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into-that's the way we're built and I assume that there's some reason for that.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #635261
#50. There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Free will and predestination in one sentence and both true.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #641670
#51. the government' - that's too sweeping a term. 'The government' is several million people, nearly a million in Washington alone. We have to ask ourselves: Whose toes were being stepped on? What person or persons? Not 'the government' - but what individuals?

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #651135
#52. A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it - it keeps him upright.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #687416
#53. The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That's a personal evaluation, of course.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #696143
#54. It's a man's business to be what he is, and to be it in style.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #726152
#55. Thou art God'. It's not a message of cheer and hope. It's a defiance - and an unafraid, unabashed assumption of personal responsibility.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #735544
#56. The mind's ability to rationalize it's own shortcomings is unlimited; I am no exception.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #751509
#57. I don't pay much attention to politics."
"You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #770714
#58. The word 'love' designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #801961
#59. Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #802529
#60. Heinlein's Rules for Writers
Rule One: You Must Write
Rule Two: Finish What Your Start
Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market
Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #870532
#61. Captain, that's not your style; you don't want to make money, you simply want to have money - in order to spend it.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #870865
#62. Jill: 'I don't pay attention to politics.'
Ben: 'You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat.'
Jill: 'I don't pay attention to that, either.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #872745
#63. That's a subject as safe as being in favor of Christmas.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #881639
#64. One might almost define intelligence as the level at which an aware organism demands, 'What's in it for me?

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #916764
#65. Everybody is equal. Everybody! That's the law."
"They are? Only from on top.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #924579
#66. There's a way that money is freedom, but it isn't money, it's that money stands for having a choice.

Jo Walton

Heinlein's Quotes #926524
#67. Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.

Laird Barron

Heinlein's Quotes #978293
#68. 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.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #980990
#69. A verbalizing race has words for every old concept . . . and creates new words or new definitions for old words whenever a new concept comes along. Always! A nervous system that is able to verbalize cannot avoid verbalizing; it's automatic.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #992376
#70. If you're not too busy this evening, why don't you bring your soft shoes and your pads over to officers' row and we'll go waltzing Matilda? Say about eight o'clock." "Yes, sir." "That's not an order, that's an invitation. If you really are slowing down,

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #995049
#71. Sit back down - and for God's sake quit trying to be as nasty as I am; you don't have my years of practice.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1001831
#72. That boy skates close to the edge, he always has. He's utterly fearless and that's how he's made his reputation. But the rabbit is never more than two jumps ahead of the coyote . .

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1025246
#73. When, after a week, Jubal had had no other message, he sent a stat care of Ben's office: "What
the hell are you doing?" Ben's answer came back, somewhat delayed: "Studying Martian and the rules for
hopscotch -- fraternally yours -- Ben.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1047524
#74. All three of us are prisoners of our early indoctrinations, for it is hard, very nearly impossible, to shake off one's earliest training.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1055187
#75. Remember though, your best weapon is between your ears and under your scalp -provided it's loaded.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1060375
#76. Never appeal to a man's 'better nature.' He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1061336
#77. 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

Heinlein's Quotes #1083699
#78. When there's nothing else you can do, breathe slower. There's no way it can hurt, and it might help.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1100699
#79. It's amazing how much 'mature wisdom' resembles being too tired.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1124077
#80. Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1142011
#81. There was a lot to be said for the job of assistant section leader - when you come right to it, it's a lot easier to die than it is to use your head.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1163000
#82. But it's a hell of a note when you can't even kill a dragon and feel lighthearted afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1166031
#83. Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1167323
#84. The duty of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition is to oppose.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1167373
#85. The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1185943
#86. They flew her," Matt pointed out. "Sure they did - and my hat's off to them. But it takes heroes to fly a box as primitive as this and I'm not the hero type.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1195699
#87. That God is in truth the sort of bloodthirsty paranoid Who would rend to bits forty-two children for the crime of sassing one of his priests. Don't ask me about the Front Office's policies; I just work here.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1209550
#88. Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1211327
#89. The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1256222
#90. No one ever does anything but what he wants to do - 'enjoys' - within the possibilities open to him. If I change a tire, it's because I enjoy it more than being stranded.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1259568
#91. - I'm so busy doing what I must do that I don't have time for what I ought to do ... and I never get a chance to do what I want to do!
- Son, that's universal. The way to keep that recipe from killing you is occasionally to do what you want to do anyhow.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1263693
#92. An invention is something that was "impossible" up to then that's why governments grant patents.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1270131
#93. A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1281960
#94. 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.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1298649
#95. It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person's behavior. The most you or any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1314217
#96. She might say: "This mess will clear up if you take that troublemaker there - What's your name? You, with the goatee - out and shoot him. Do it now."
Glory Road; Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1319144
#97. Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs - sex especially. When they are growing up, they are nerve ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any invasion of their privacy. Oh, sure, they'll make mistakes - but that's their business, not yours. (You made your own mistakes, did you not?)

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1332807
#98. A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1351749
#99. The problem with dictatorships - as I read somewhere recently - and with poisonous ideologies, too, is that they are like sharks. They must keep moving forward or die. What caused their aggression is not what you did. It's who they are.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1379624
#100. Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it's more sanitary.

Robert A. Heinlein

Heinlein's Quotes #1384751

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