Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.

Peace is an extension of war by political means. Plenty of elbow-room is pleasanter -- and much safer.

A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price

The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.

Death is the lot of us all, and the only way that the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all Eternity.

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

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

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.

Marriage is a psychological condition, not a civil contract and a license. Once a marriage is dead, it is dead, and it begins to stink faster than a dead fish.

A zest for living must include a willingness to die.

Damnit! Nationalism should stop at the stratosphere!

The killer looked up as the bullet hit him. He looked as if he were puzzled by some strange occurence, being too freshly dead to be aware of it.

Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.

To assess the intelligence of a committee, divide the IQ of its stupidest member by the number of members.

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.

The nice thing about citing god as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove.

I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.

What we think of as 'Physical beauty' is almost certainly a tag for a complex of useful survival characteristics. Smartness - intelligence - among them.

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.

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.

Don't tell me violence doesn't solve anything. Look at Carthage.

When the need arises - and it does - you must be able to shoot your own dog. Don't farm it out — that doesn't make it nicer, it makes it worse.

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

I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists.

I came, I saw, she conquered." The original Latin seems to have been garbled.

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.

I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it's better to laugh than cry.

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.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality.

There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?

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.

In a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.

You live and learn. Or you don't live long.

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

Specialization is for insects.

Since when was an emotional argument won by logic?

Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell.

It's a man's business to be what he is, and to be it in style.

Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden.

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

Take care of the cojones and the frijoles will take care of themselves. Try to have getaway money - but don't be fanatic about it.

The basic of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

No storyteller has been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.

To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.

Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.

Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.

In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is to never let them find out.