Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

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

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

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

[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously-after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important ... so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.

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.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result. 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.

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

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

Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.

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

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and thoroughly immoral-doctrine that, 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

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

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.

There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.

There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!

Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

A fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.

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

Ability is a wonderful thing, but its value is greatly enhanced by dependability. Ability implies repeatability and accountability.

Tilting at windmills hurts you more than the windmills.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

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

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

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

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. - Second Amendment to the Constitution An armed society is a polite society.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.

Have you ever noticed how much they look like orchids? lovely!

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.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.

Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.

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'.

A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

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

Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.