Robert A. Heinlein Quotes - Page 2

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you're ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he's as happy as a worm in an apple - asleep.

Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.

The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . 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.We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

I had never been much interested in Pluto, too many facts and too much isolation.

A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

The Mother Thing makes our world.

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.

Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is.

His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.

Every citizen is free to perform any act which does not hamper the equal freedom of another. No law shall forbid the performance of any act, which does not damage the physical or economic welfare of any other person.

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — ie., none to speak of

Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.

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

Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive.

Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.

…the greatest danger to man in space was man himself.

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.

Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse---and without examining evidence which their “common sense” told them was impossible.

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

You can't believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside.

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

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.

But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees.

Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.

Butterflies are not insects,' Captain John Sterling said soberly. 'They are self-propelled flowers.

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.

I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.

A thing can be fine on paper but utterly crummy in the field.

People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox.

Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must WriteRule Two: Finish What Your StartRule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial OrderRule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the MarketRule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.

How is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in his profession if his victim fails to cooperate?

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

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.

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist--a master--and that is what Auguste Rodin was--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 . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body.

You are telling me that I did something because I was going to do something.”“Well, didn’t you? You were there.”“No, I didn’t—no… well, maybe I did, but it didn’t feel like it.”“Why should you expect it to? It was something totally new to your experience.”“But… but—” Wilson took a deep breath and got control of himself. Then he reached back into his academic philosophical concepts and produced the notion he had been struggling to express. “It denies all reasonable theories of causation. You would have me believe that causation can be completely circular. I went through because I came back from going through to persuade myself to go through. That’s silly.”“Well, didn’t you?

Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

- 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.

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.

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.

He was finding it ruinously expensive to be rich.

Could dump two Chinee down in one of our maria and they would get rich selling rocks to each other while raising twelve kids. Then a Hindu would sell retail stuff he got from them wholesale--below cost at a fat profit. We got along.

Never try to outstubborn a cat.

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.

For the first time in my life, I was reading things which had not been approved by the Prophet's censors, and the impact on my mind was devastating. Sometimes I would glance over my shoulder to see who was watching me, frightened in spite of myself. I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy...censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked, contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything---you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe... until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers.

God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good—and is no sillier than any other theology.

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

Oh, "Tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't,' I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, 'or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless.

He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an insurance fee amounting to much less that the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state's means of exchange.

It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.

The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.

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

Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.

All those religions--they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying.

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

It's a long story. Want a refill?""No, let's start the steak. Where's the button?""Right here.""Well, push it.""Me? You offered to cook.""Ben Caxton, I will lie here and starve before I will get up to push a button six inches from your finger""As you wish." He pressed the button. "But don't forget who cooked dinner.

If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains.