Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Tilting at windmills hurts you more than the windmills.

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

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

Do-gooding is like treating hemophilia - the real cure is to let hemophiliacs bleed to death...before they breed more hemophiliacs.

It was better to live with disappointment and frustration than to live without hope.

Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.

Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.

We have our hands, we have our brains, we have the challenge all around us, and we have within (from whatever source) the will to strive. That is enough; there is no need to assert 'belief' in that which we do not, as yet, know.

Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.

If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.

Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.

Learn to say No—and to be rude about it when necessary. Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.

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.

Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.

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

All men are created unequal.

The early worm deserves the bird.

A family reunion is an effective form of birth control.

Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

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 government sticks its nose in everything, now.

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.

I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith-it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.

Teaching causes people to go into situations from which they cannot escape, except by thinking. Do not handicap children by making their lives easy.

The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.

The country and culture commonly known as "America" had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degrees---its religious revivals were often hysterical in a fashion almost Dionysian.

My old man taught me two things: 'Mind own business' and 'Always cut cards.'

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.

"I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting" ... "But that's not all people laugh at." "Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh sweetheart... a joke, or anything else- but something that gave you a a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness wasn't there." He thought. "I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people."

Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.

The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws.

Don't appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he's not at home and never was at home, and couldn't care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy- live or die- is strictly your business and the universe doesn't care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it- 'Thou art God!'

The shamans are forever yacking about their snake oil miracles. I prefer the real McCoy, a pregnant woman.

The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.

The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.

Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing the risks you can't avoid. This permits you to play out the game untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.

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

But does Man have any 'right' to spread through the universe? Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics, you name it, is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what man is, not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be. The Universe will let us know - later - whether or not Man has any "right" to expand through it.

If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.

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

My vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free.

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

My folks tried to make a preacher of me and missed by a narrow margin… I would have made a good one if I hadn’t fallen into the fatal folly of reading anything I could lay hands on. With just a touch more self confidence and a liberal helping of ignorance I could have been a famous evangelist.

Democracy can survive anything except Democrats

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.

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.]