Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet you can't win.

If possible, leave room for your enemy to become your friend.

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual" - find out how he feels about astrology.

When it don’t rain, the roof don’t leak; when it rains, I can’t fix it nohow.

Take big bites. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

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

The mind's ability to rationalize it's own shortcomings is unlimited; I am no exception.

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.

Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.

Analogy is even slipperier than logic.

Most women are damn fools and children. But they've got more range than we've got. The brave ones are braver, the good ones are better - and the vile ones are viler, for that matter.

I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

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

A human being has no natural rights of any nature.

Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit

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

Violence never settles anything should be debated by the ghosts of Hitler and Stalin, with the city fathers of Carthage as referees.

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

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.

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

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?

Some people insist that "mediocre" is better than "best." They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.

The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.

Anything free costs twice as much in the long run or turns out worthless.

The meek shall inherit the earth - a 6 foot plot above them.

Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation.

The early worm deserves the bird.

There are only five things really worth drawing; four of them are pretty girls and the fifth is cats.

Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.

Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.

A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!

The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.

Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo.

Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

Only a sadistic scoundrel-or a fool-tells the bald truth on social occasions.

You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets fretful. After he pees in it, he likes the flavor better, so he buys it.

Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of single-minded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money.

The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion - in the long run, these are the only people who count.

To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.

A little more money won't do you any good - because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation, regardless of the amount.

You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting.

Unarmed hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest.

Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on ... as long as the women and children are saved.

The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

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

A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.

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