Robert A. Heinlein Quotes: 29

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

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

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

• Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.

  Starship Troopers

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

  Time Enough for Love

• 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 - in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

• 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.

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

• Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

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

• Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

• A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

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

• Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector...and miss.

  Time Enough for Love

• If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• 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.

  Have Space Suit—Will Travel

• Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

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

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.

• Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own . . . and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing . . . is one that they can't or won't entertain.

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• Men are not potatoes!

• Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees.

  Stranger in a Strange Land

• The Mother Thing makes our world.

  Have Space Suit—Will Travel

• More depended on the student than on the school.

  Have Space Suit—Will Travel

• When you read about chemistry and physics, you want to do them too.

  Have Space Suit—Will Travel