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Quotes by Robert A. Heinlein


Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.
– Robert A. Heinlein
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
– Robert A. Heinlein
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.
– Robert A. Heinlein
By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
– Robert A. Heinlein
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.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
– Robert A. Heinlein
For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.
– Robert A. Heinlein
I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.
– Robert A. Heinlein
I never learned from a man who agreed with me.
– Robert A. Heinlein
If you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. and, if you shake him, he bites.
– Robert A. Heinlein
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.
– Robert A. Heinlein
It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.
– Robert A. Heinlein
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Never insult anyone by accident.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
– Robert A. Heinlein
No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Of all the strange crimes that human beings have legislated of nothing, blasphemy is the most amazing - with obscenity and indecent exposure fighting it out for the second and third place.
– Robert A. Heinlein
One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
– Robert A. Heinlein
One man's magic is another man's engineering. Supernatural is a null word.
– Robert A. Heinlein
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
– Robert A. Heinlein
One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
– Robert A. Heinlein
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.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid).
– Robert A. Heinlein
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
– Robert A. Heinlein
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
– Robert A. Heinlein
There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.
– Robert A. Heinlein
They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.
– Robert A. Heinlein
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.
– Robert A. Heinlein
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.
– Robert A. Heinlein
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.
– Robert A. Heinlein
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
– Robert A. Heinlein
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
– Robert A. Heinlein
A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain—then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?
– Robert A. Heinlein
Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you--if you don't play, you can't win.
– Robert A. Heinlein
People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.
– Robert A. Heinlein
A motion to adjourn is always in order.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
– Robert A. Heinlein
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
– Robert A. Heinlein
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
– Robert A. Heinlein
The universe never did make sense I suspect it was built on government contract.
– Robert A. Heinlein
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. 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.
– Robert A. Heinlein
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
– Robert A. Heinlein