Robert A. Heinlein: Trending quotes

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Robert A. Heinlein: 1114 quotes68 likes

“When we were living in Colorado there was snowfall. Our cat — I’m a cat man — wanted to get out of the house so I opened a door for him but he wouldn’t leave. Just kept on crying. He’d seen snow before and I couldn’t understand it. I kept opening other doors for him and he still wouldn’t leave. Then Ginny said, «Oh, he’s looking for a door into summer». I threw up my hands, told her not to say another word, and wrote the novel «The Door Into Summer» in 13 days.”

Robert A. Heinlein

“Women seem to have almost unlimited capacity for forgiveness.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Since it is usually a man who needs forgiveness, this must be a racial survival trait.
Richard Ames; chapter 16, p. 200
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

“Rod…were you born that stupid? Or did you have to study?”

Robert A. Heinlein book Tunnel in the Sky

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 6, “I Think He Is Dead” (p. 104)

“One time in a hundred a gun might save your life; the other ninety-nine it will just tempt you into folly.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Tunnel in the Sky

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 2, “The Fifth Way” (p. 43)

“When a cat greets you, he makes a big operation of it, bumping, stropping your legs, buzzing like mischief. But when he leaves, he just walks off and never looks back. Cats are smart.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Tunnel in the Sky

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 2, “The Fifth Way” (p. 42)

“Fact is, you work too hard…the universe won’t run down if you don’t wind it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Star Beast

Source: The Star Beast (1954), Chapter 12, “Concerning Pidgie-Widgie” (p. 185)

“I do not like weapons, Doctor; they are the last resort of faulty diplomacy.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Star Beast

Source: The Star Beast (1954), Chapter 9, “Customs and an Ugly Duckling” (p. 151)

“If you can’t outargue the other fellow, sometimes you can outlive him.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Star Beast

Source: The Star Beast (1954), Chapter 6, “Space is Deep, Excellency” (p. 110)

“Funny sort of science! I guess they were pretty ignorant in those days.”

Robert A. Heinlein

“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.”
A Tenderfoot in Space (p. 691)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“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

A Tenderfoot in Space (p. 689)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“What good is the race of man? Monkeys, he thought, monkeys with a spot of poetry in them, cluttering and wasting a second-string planet near a third-string star. But sometimes they finish in style.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Year of the Jackpot

The Year of the Jackpot (p. 644)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“To be sure, some humans were always doing silly things—but at what point had prime damfoolishness become commonplace? When for example, had the zombie-like professional models become accepted ideals of American womanhood?”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Year of the Jackpot

The Year of the Jackpot (p. 628)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“Apparently she believes she is safe. Evil is essentially stupid, Joe; despite her brilliance, she believes what she wishes to believe. Or it may be that she is willing to risk her own death against the tempting prize of absolute power.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf

Gulf (p. 559)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“Don’t say that I don’t mix with the common people, Joe; I sell used ’copters for a living. You can’t get any commoner. And don’t imply that my heart is not with them. We are not like them, but we are tied to them by the strongest bond of all, for we are all, each every one, sickening with the same certainly fatal disease—we are alive.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf

Gulf (pp. 556-557)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“A totalitarian political religion is incompatible with free investigation.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf

Gulf (p. 545)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf

Gulf (p. 544)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“For a hundred and fifty years or so democracy, or something like it, could flourish safely. The issues were such as to be settled without disaster by votes of common men, befogged and ignorant as they were. But now, if the race is simply to stay alive, political decisions depend on real knowledge of such things as nuclear physics, planetary ecology, genetic theory, even system mechanics. They aren’t up to it, Joe. With goodness and more will than they possess less than one in a thousand could stay awake over one page of nuclear physics; they can’t learn what they must know.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf

Gulf (p. 544)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“He had the high degree of courage so common in the human race, a race capable of conceiving death, yet able to face its probability daily, on the highway, on the obstetrics table, on the battlefield, in the air, in the subway—and to face lightheartedly the certainty of death in the end.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Goldfish Bowl

Goldfish Bowl (p. 381)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“For vice has this defect; it cannot be truly intelligent. Its very motives are its weakness.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Lost Legacy

Lost Legacy (p. 339)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“And all over the country the antagonists of human liberty, of human dignity—the racketeers, the crooked political figures, the shysters, the dealers in phony religions, the sweat-shoppers, the petty authoritarians, all of the key figures among the traffickers in human misery and human oppression, themselves somewhat adept in the arts of the mind and acutely aware of the danger of free knowledge—all of this unholy breed stirred uneasily and wondered what was taking place.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Lost Legacy

Lost Legacy (p. 339)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)