Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (557 quotes, page 10)

“Wong shook his head sadly. “I sometimes think that modern education is deliberately designed to handicap a boy.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 6 “Reading, and ’riting, and ’rithmetic—”, p. 71

Education , Boy , Thinking

“The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."”

Robert A. Heinlein

Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind. The door they opened leads to the hope that H. sapiens will survive indefinitely long, even longer than this solid planet on which we stand tonight. As a direct result of what they did, it is now possible that the human race will never die.
Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

Behavior , Loyalty

“Marriage is not ownership and wives are not property.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Puppet Masters

Source: The Puppet Masters (1951), Chapter 21 (p. 116)

Marriage

“No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other — but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Methuselah's Children (1958)

Life , Reading

“Jim?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“What’s this about leaving your gun where the baby could reach it?”
Jim flushed. “It wasn’t charged, Dad.”
“If all the people who had been killed with unloaded guns were laid end to end it would make quite a line up. You are proud of being a licensed gun wearer, aren’t you?
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“And I’m proud to have you be one. It means you are a responsible, trusted adult. But when I sponsored you before the Council and stood up with you when you took your oath, I guaranteed that you would obey the regulations and follow the code, wholeheartedly and all the time—not just most of the time. Understand me?”

Robert A. Heinlein book Red Planet

“Yes, sir. I think I do.”
Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 2, “South Colony, Mars”, pp. 16-17

People , Understanding , Thinking , Time

“I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea.”

Robert A. Heinlein

"The Discovery of the Future," Guest of Honor Speech, 3rd World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, Colorado (4 July 1941)

World , Idea , Thinking , Science

“It didn’t happen that way,” Roger Stone cut in, “so there is no use talking about other possibilities. They probably aren’t really possibilities at all, if only we understood it.”
Pollux: “Predestination.”
Castor: “Very shaky theory.”
Roger grinned. “I’m not a determinist and you can’t get my goat. I believe in free will.”
Pollux: “Another very shaky theory.”
“Make up your minds,” their father told them. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“Why not?” asked Hazel. “Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.”
“Not mathematical,” objected Pollux.
Castor nodded. “Just poetry.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Rolling Stones

“And not very good poetry.”
Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 14, “Flat Cats Factorial” (p. 182)

Way , Mathematics

“He gave up and went back to loafing, found that he could sleep all right in the afternoons but that the practice kept him awake at night.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 17, “To Reset the Clock” (p. 173)

Sleep , Night

“McIlvaine continued, “Take the amoeba—a more basic, and much more successful life form than than ours. The motivational psychology of the amoeba—”
I switched off my ears; free speech gives a man the right to talk about the “psychology” of an amoeba, but I don’t have to listen.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Puppet Masters

Source: The Puppet Masters (1951), Chapter 19 (p. 104)

Life , Motivation , Success

“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 book Red Planet

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 4, “Lowell Academy”, p. 44

Women , Family , Idea , Happiness

“Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me—death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way.”

Robert A. Heinlein book I Will Fear No Evil

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 27, p. 488

Death , Way , Birth , Happiness

“The sort of guardian you can hire is worth about as much as the sort of wife you can buy.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 12 “P.R.S. Pathfinder”, p. 143

“The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance.”

Robert A. Heinlein book To Sail Beyond the Sunset

Source: To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987), p. 370 (Ace 1988)

People

“I looked it up later; he was right. Dad is an absolute mine of useless information. He says a fact should be loved for itself alone.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 9, “The Moons of Jupiter” (pp. 90-91)

Love

“The door dilated.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

This offhand mention has become the simplest (three words!) and often-quoted exposition of the wonders of a different world, where what would be novel today has become simply the way things work.
Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 1, “All of them should have been very happy—”, p. 5 and several other times

“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

Cats , Understanding , Summer , Housing

“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)

Forgiveness , Women

“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)

Study , Stupidity

“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)

Life , Time

“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)

Cats , Making love

“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)

Universe

“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)

Science

“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)

Color

“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)

Star

“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)

Death , Evil , Stupidity

“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)

People , Heart , Disease

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

Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf

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

Religion

“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)

Truth , Self-confidence , Lie , Color

“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)

Democracy , Dependency , Learning , Knowledge

“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)

Courage , Death

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