Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

The future is better than the past. Despite the crepe hangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands ... with tools ... with horse sense and science and engineering.

I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.

When the citizens of a nation will no longer volunteer to defend it, then it is probably not worth saving. No nation has the right to survive with conscript troops, and in the long run, no nation ever has.

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.

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

Love is what still goes on when you're not horny.

Civilians are like beans; you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy. But you can't buy fighting spirit.

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

The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it.

But space travel can't ease the pressure on a planet grown too crowded not even with today's ships and probably not with any future ships-because stupid people won't leave the slopes of their home volcano even when it starts to smoke and rumble. What space travel does do is drain off the best brains: those smart enough to see a catastrophe before it happens, and with the guts to pay the price-abandon home, wealth, friends, relatives, everything-and go. That's a tiny fraction of one percent. But that's enough.

Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.

Make money, lose money - who cares? The idea is to enjoy it.

Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.

The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force.

Love your country, but never trust its government.

Brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value.

Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime - and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.

One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast.

Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.

...more than six people cannot agree on anything, three is better and one is perfect for a job that one can do. This is why parliamentary bodies all through history, when they accomplished anything, owed it to a few strong men who dominated the rest.

Women are amazing creatures-sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are.

ANYTHING will burn with enough gasoline and dynamite.

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

If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.

Heroism' often consists in keeping your head in an emergency and doing the best you can with what you have instead of panicking and being shot in the tail. People who fight this way win more battles than do intentional heroes; a glory hound often throws away the lives of his mates as well as his own.

As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.

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'.

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

Remember though, your best weapon is between your ears and under your scalp -provided it's loaded.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.

We came here for a small, informal meeting. We find you've turned it into a circus. Well, if you're going to have a circus, you've got to have elephants.

Library Science is the key to all science, just as mathematics is its language - and civilization will rise or fall, depending on how well librarians do their jobs.

They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.

Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.

The Stone trembled and threw herself outward bound, toward Saturn. In her train followed hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of thousands of restless, rolling Stones . . . to Saturn . . . to Uranus, to Pluto . . . rolling on out to the stars . . . outward bound to the ends of the Universe.

Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.

Was there ever a time when the majority was right?

Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too.

You don’t pay back, you pay forward.

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.

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything.

Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy.

History does not record anywhere or at any time a religion that has any rational basis.

Never insult anyone by accident.

At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different--in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.