Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (557 quotes, page 11)

There must be a flaw in that, since I’ve always been taught that it is wrong to take the law in your own hands. But I can’t find the flaw and it sounds axiomatic, self-evident. Switch it around. If something is wrong for one person to do, can it possibly be made right by having a lot of people (a government) agree to do it together? Even unanimously?
If anything is wrong, it is wrong—and vox populi can’t change it.
Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 13 (p. 169)

“The tragedy about Romeo and Juliet is not that they died so young but that the boy-meets-girl reflex should be so overpowering as to defeat all common sense.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Podkayne of Mars

Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 10 (p. 125)

“It’s lots better to be miserable than to be bored.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Podkayne of Mars

Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 8 (p. 94)

“I really am a good listener because you never can tell when you will pick up something useful—and all in the world any woman has to do to be considered “charming” by men is to listen while they talk.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Podkayne of Mars

Source: Podkayne of Mars (1963), Chapter 6 (p. 60)

“Don’t kid yourself, knowing too much is a capital offense. In politics it always has been.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1982), Chapter 31 (p. 327)
Context: Don’t kid yourself, Friday; knowing too much is a capital offense. In politics it always has been.

“Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1982), Chapter 23 (p. 242)

“Before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1982), Chapter 23 (pp. 240-241)
Context: “So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts.“ Elementary. Go on. “Well…high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way—even though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation.”

“Brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value. Any human organization can be rendered useless, impotent, a danger to itself, by selectively removing its best minds while carefully leaving the stupid ones in place.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1982), Chapter 4 (p. 37)

“My mistake. My inexcusable mistake, as a con man never stops being a con man; he can’t. But I suffered from a will to believe, a defect of character that I thought I had rooted out. I was mistaken.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1982), Chapter 3 (p. 22)

“Good stories are rarely true.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Tunnel in the Sky

Source: Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Chapter 3, "Through the Tunnel"

“I sometimes think that my own weakness lies in not realizing the full depths of the weakness and stupidity of men. As a reasonable creature myself I seem to have an unfortunate tendency to expect others unlike myself to be reasonable.”

Robert A. Heinlein

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (p. 267)
Short fiction, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein (1999)

“Why stay in Chicago; what did the town have to justify its existence? One decent boulevard, one decent suburb to the north, priced for the rich, two universities and a lake. As for the rest, endless miles of depressing, dirty streets. The town was one big stockyard.”

Robert A. Heinlein

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (p. 261)
Short fiction, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein (1999)

“It was fairly evident that at least 90 per cent of all magic, probably more, was balderdash and sheer mystification.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Waldo

Waldo (p. 186)
Short fiction, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein (1999)

“It may possibly be urged the shape of a culture—its mores, evaluations, family organizations, eating habits, living patterns, pedagogical methods, institutions, forms of government, and so forth—arise from the economic necessities of its technology.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Waldo

Waldo (p. 134)
Short fiction, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein (1999)

“We must make the fee contingent on results.”

Robert A. Heinlein

“Did you ever hear of anyone in his right mind dealing with a wizard on any other basis?”
Magic, Inc. (p. 21)
Short fiction, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein (1999)

“We are all free—to walk our appointed paths. Just as a stone is free to fall when you toss it into the air. No one is free in the abstract meaning you give the word.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farnham's Freehold

Source: Farnham's Freehold (1964), Chapter 15 (p. 221)

“The concept of change baffled them.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farnham's Freehold

Source: Farnham's Freehold (1964), Chapter 14 (p. 196)

“We have everything for a still; I stocked the items to build one if a war came along—not just for us but because liquor is money in any primitive society.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farnham's Freehold

Source: Farnham's Freehold (1964), Chapter 10 (p. 145)

“You know that color does not matter to me. I want to know other things about a man. Is his word good? Does he meet his obligations? Does he do honest work? Is he brave? Will he stand up and be counted?”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farnham's Freehold

Source: Farnham's Freehold (1964), Chapter 7 (p. 115)