Robert A. Heinlein: Trending quotes (page 13)

“This is the great day. This is the greatest event in all the history of the human race, up to this time. That is — today is New Year's Day of the Year One. If we don't change the calendar, historians will do so. The human race — this is our change, our puberty rite, bar mitzvah, confirmation, from the change of our infancy into adulthood for the human race. And we're going to go on out, not only to the Moon, to the stars; we're going to spread. I don't know that the United States is going to do it; I hope so. I have — I'm an American myself; I want it to be done by us. But in any case, the human race is going to do it, it's utterly inevitable: we're going to spread through the entire universe.”

Robert A. Heinlein

In a live interview with Walter Cronkite of CBS News, on the day of the first moonwalk (20 July 1969)
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume I (1907–1949): Learning Curve (2010)

Hope , History , Star , Universe

“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 book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 15 “Pie With a Fork”, p. 180

Past

“Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.”

Robert A. Heinlein

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

Behavior

“Gravity’s books have got to balance.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 17, “Disaster” (p. 177)

Books

“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 book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 16 “P.R.S. Astarte”, p. 195

Thinking , Study

“I had taken a partner once before—but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 10

People , Sleep , Time

“Don’t pay any attention to what she says. Half of it’s always wrong and she doesn’t mean the rest.”

Robert A. Heinlein

The Menace from Earth (p. 351)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

“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 book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 7, “Burn him down at once—”, p. 75

Love , Help , Baby

“Son, suppose you tend to your knitting and I tend to mine.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Double Star

Double Star (1956)

“Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 2

“I think the major problem in growing up is to become sophisticated without becoming cynical.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 27, p. 473

Problem , Thinking

“My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 5

Law

“Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Waldo & Magic, Inc. (1950)

“Never encourage a man to cook breakfast; it causes him to wonder if women are necessary. If you always get his breakfast and don’t raise controversial issues until after his second cup of coffee, you can get away with murder the rest of the time. They don’t notice other odors when they smell bacon.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter V : “—a wedding ring is not a ring in my nose—”, p. 41

Women , Coffee , Time , Cooking

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

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Source: Time Enough for Love: the lives of Lazarus Long; a novel , (1973), p. 366

Science

“By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget—especially those who ought to know better, such as yourself—that while the laws of statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just as firmly that coincidences do happen.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 8

People , Law , Forgetting

“He considered horoscopes as silly as spectacles on a cow.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 4, “The Glory Road” (p. 43)

“The Almighty-God idea came under attack because it explained nothing; it simply pushed all explanations one stage farther away. In the nineteenth century atheistic positivism started displacing the Almighty-God notion in that minority of the population that bathed regularly. Atheism had a limited run, as it, too, explains nothing, being merely Godism turned upside down.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Source: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985), p. 564

God , Idea

“Never listen to newscasts. Saves wear and tear on the nervous system.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Red Planet

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 2, “South Colony, Mars”, p. 17

Tear

“Everybody has a skeleton in the closet; the thing is to keep ’em there and not at the feast.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starman Jones

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 10, “Garson’s Planet” (p. 109)