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Robert A. Heinlein

547 quotes

“Earth, seen from space, looked as it had looked in color-stereo pictures, but he found that the real thing is as vastly more satisfying as a hamburger is better than a picture of one.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Funny sort of science! I guess they were pretty ignorant in those days.” “Don’t go running down our grandfathers. If it weren’t for them, you and I would be squatting in a cave, scratching fleas. No, Bub, they were pretty sharp; they just didn’t have all the facts. We’ve got more facts, but that doesn’t make us smarter.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t like cats.” “Ever lived with a cat? No, I see you haven’t. How can you have the gall not to like something you don’t know anything about? Wait till you’ve lived with a cat, then tell me what you think. Until then...well, who told you you were entitled to an opinion?” “Huh? Why, everybody is entitled to his own opinion!” “Nonsense, Bub. Nobody is entitled to an opinion about something he is ignorant of. If the Captain told me how to bake a cake, I would politely suggest that he not stick his nose into my trade...contrariwise, I never tell him how to plan an orbit to Mars.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hundred dollar bills have a hypnotic effect on a person not used to them.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hans had courage to burn. If he had been willing to knuckle under to the Nazis he would have stayed at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. But Hans was a scientist. He wouldn’t trim his notion of truth to fit political gangsters.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was just trying to show you,” he went on, “just how insubstantial a ‘common sense’ idea can be when you pin it down. Neither ‘common sense’ nor ‘logic’ can prove anything. Proof comes from experiment, or to put it another way, from experience, and from nothing else.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The door dilated.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He posed me a question which I must answer correctly—else he will not co-operate.” “Huh? What was the question? “I’ll ask you. Martha, what is the meaning of life?” “What! Why, what a stupid question!” “He did not ask it stupidly.” “It’s a psychopathic question, unlimited, unanswerable, and, in all probability, sense free.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since when did a mathematician need any tools but his own head? Pythagoras had done well enough with a stick and a stretch of sand.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can I trust you, my friend?” “If you can’t, then what is my assurance worth?”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But what you’re talking about means giving up all that—just the noble primitive, simple and self-sufficient. He’s going to chop down a tree—who sold him the ax? He wants to shoot a deer—who made his gun?...There never was and there never could be a noble simple creature such as you described. He’d be an ignorant savage, with dirt on his skin and lice in his hair. He would work sixteen hours a day to stay alive at all. He’d sleep in a filthy hut on a dirt floor. And his point of view and his mental processes would be just two jumps above an animal.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Babies are fun. And they’re not much trouble. Feed ‘em occasionally, help them when they need it, and love them a lot. That’s all there is to it.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So-called instincts are instructive, Felix. They point to survival values.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I venture to predict that, when we get around to reviewing their records, we will find that the rebels were almost all—all, perhaps—men who had never been outstandingly successful at anything. Their only prominence was among themselves.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hamilton took a deep breath, let it out, then said, “Listen to me. I don’t know much about women, and sometimes it seems like I didn’t know anything about them. But I’m sure of this—she won’t let a little thing like you taking a pot shot at her stand in the way if you ever had any chance with her at all. She’ll forgive you.” “You don’t really mean that, do you?” Monroe-Alpha’s face was still tragic, but he clutched at the hope. “Certainly I do. Women will forgive anything.” With a flash of insight he added, “Otherwise the race would have died out long ago.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no subject inappropriate for scientific research. Johann, we’ve let you fellows have a monopoly of such matters for too long. The most serious questions in the world have been left to faith or speculation. It is time for scientists to cope with them, or admit that science is no more than pebble counting.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Protoplasm is protean; any simple protoplasm can become any complex form of life under mutation and selection.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Great Egg must love human beings, he made a lot of them.” “Same argument applies to oysters, only more so.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, we get along. She lets me have my own way, and later I find out I’ve done just what she wanted me to do.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At fourteen months he began speaking in sentences, short and of his own structure, but sentences. The subjects of his conversation, or, rather, his statements, were consistently egocentric. Normal again—no one expects an infant to write essays on the beauties of altruism.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Theobald ignored him. He could be deaf when he chose; he seemed to find it particularly difficult to hear the word “No.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Natural selection—the dying out of the poorly equipped—goes on day in and day out, inexorable and automatic. It is as tireless, as inescapable, as entropy.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What of it? I’d still be myself. I don’t care what people think.” “You’re mistaken, son. To believe that you can live free of your cultural matrix is one of the easiest fallacies and has some of the worst consequences. You are part of your group whether you like it or not, and you are bound by its customs.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That’s a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It’s a good thing.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wong shook his head sadly. “I sometimes think that modern education is deliberately designed to handicap a boy.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behavior and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalize original and imaginative thinking.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Matt, you are suffering from a disease of youth—you expect moral problems to have nice, neat, black-and-white answers.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish Doc Pickering was here.” “Yeah, and if fish had feet, they’d be mice.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the past with less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on the spot.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I think,” he told Tex, “that Th’Wing thinks that I am an idiot studying hard to become a moron—but flunking the course.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never listen to newscasts. Saves wear and tear on the nervous system.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Doc says the Company set-up is just one big happy family, and the idea that it is a non-profit corporation is the biggest joke since women were invented.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m not going to give up my gun. Dad wouldn’t want me to. I’m sure of that. Anyhow, I’m licensed and I don’t have to. I’m a qualified marksman, I’ve passed the psycho tests, and I’ve taken the oath; I’m as much entitled to wear a gun as he is.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He’ll pay no mind to me anyhow,” MacRae answered. “That’s the healthy thing about kids.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I found out a long time ago that you have to take some chances in this life. Otherwise you are just a vegetable, headed for the soup pot.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You put me in mind of a case I ran into in the American West. A respected citizen shot a professional gunthrower in the back. When asked why he didn’t give the other chap a chance to draw, the survivor said, ‘Well, he’s dead and I’m alive and that’s how I wanted it to be.’ Jamie, if you use sportsmanship on a known scamp, you put yourself at a terrible disadvantage.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thanks, awfully,” said Thomas. “Now...uh...what do I owe you for this?” Finney’s reaction made him feel as if he had uttered some indecency. “Don’t mention payment, my son! Money is wrong—it’s the means whereby man enslaves his brother.” “I beg your pardon, sir,” Thomas apologized sincerely. “Nevertheless, I wish there were some way for me to do something for you.” “That is another matter. Help your brother when you can, and help will come to you when you need it.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Three things only do slaves require, food, work, and their gods, and of the three their gods must never be touched, else they grow troublesome.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These savages and their false gods! I grow weary of them. Yet they are necessary; the priests and the gods of slaves always fight on the side of the Masters. It is a rule of nature.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They made a good team. As a matter of fact their talents were not too far apart; the artist is two-thirds artisan and the artisan has essentially the same creative urge as the artist.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We don’t have to be convincing—not in the sense of getting converts. Real converts might prove to be a nuisance. We just have to be convincing enough to look like a legitimate religion to our overlords. And that doesn’t have to be very convincing. All religions look equally silly from the outside.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scheer, are you any good at counterfeiting?” “I’ve never tried it, sir.” “No time like the present. Every man needs an alternative profession.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sex is rearing its interesting head.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man has to grow up in a language to be able to understand it scrambled.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When had a slave religion proved anything but an aid to the conqueror? Slaves needed a wailing wall; they went into their temples, prayed to their gods to deliver them from oppression, and came out to work in the fields and factories, relaxed and made harmless by the emotional catharsis of prayer.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any cipher can be broken, any code can be compromised. But the most exact academic knowledge of a language gives no clue to its slang, its colloquial allusions, its half statements, over statements, and inverted meanings.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What sort of a remark?” “Just priestly mumbo-jumbo. Impressive and no real meaning. Can you do it?” “I think so—I used to sell magazine subscriptions.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source