Robert A. Heinlein Quotes page 7

“At fourteen months he began speaking in sentences, short and of his own structure, but sentences. The subjects of his conversation, or, rather, his statements, were consistently egocentric. Normal again—no one expects an infant to write essays on the beauties of altruism.”

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XIX : Something is gained in translation—, p. 166

“I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it’s better to laugh than cry.”

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 14, “—and beat him when he sneezes”, p. 131

“At that point I realized that I had been thinking in Russian. It’s a wonderful language for paranoid thoughts.”

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 25, p. 442

“The best things in history are accomplished by people who get “tired of being shoved around.””

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XIX : Something is gained in translation—, p. 166

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 12

“A man who marries at my age isn’t taking a wife, he’s indenturing a nurse.”

“The truth of a proposition has little or nothing to do with its psychodynamics. The notion that ‘truth will prevail’ is merely a pious wish; history doesn’t show it.”

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 14, p. 224

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Methuselah’s Children (p. 606)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

“I dictated my report; forty recruitments all okayed by the Psych Bureau — counting my own, which I knew would be okayed. I was here, wasn't I? Then I taped a request for assignment to operations; I was sick of recruiting.”

Robert A. Heinlein book "—All You Zombies—"

"—All You Zombies—" (1958)

““If there was anything, anything more at all, after this crazy mix-up we call living, I could feel that there might be some point to the whole frantic business, even if I did not know and could not know the full answer while I was alive.”
“And suppose there was not? Suppose that when a man’s body disintegrates, he himself disappears absolutely. I’m bound to say I find it a probable hypothesis.”
“Well— It wouldn’t be cheerful knowledge, but it would be better than not knowing. You could plan your life rationally, at least. A man might even be able to get a certain amount of satisfaction in planning things better for the future, after he’s gone. A vicarious pleasure in the anticipation.””

““You know the answers, but just between ourselves, that sketch smells a bit. It’s sloppy.”
“I never did have any artistic talent,” Art said defensively. “I’d rather take a photograph any day.”
“You’ve taken too many photographs, maybe. As for artistic talent, I haven’t any either, but I learned to sketch. Look, Art—the rest of you guys get this, too—if you can’t sketch, you can’t see. If you really see what you’re looking at, you can put it down on paper, accurately. If you really remember what you have looked at, you can sketch it accurately from memory.”
“But the lines don’t go where I intend them to.”
“A pencil will go where you push it. It hasn’t any life of its own. The answer is practice and more practice and thinking about what you are looking at. All of you lugs want to be scientists. Well, the ability to sketch accurately is as necessary to a scientist as his slipstick. More necessary, you can get along without a slide rule.””

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 10, “—the only game in town”, p. 105

Robert A. Heinlein book Rocket Ship Galileo

Source: Rocket Ship Galileo (1947), Chapter 10, “The Method of Science”, p. 108

“Protoplasm is protean; any simple protoplasm can become any complex form of life under mutation and selection.”

“Man needs freedom, but few men are so strong as to be happy with complete freedom. A man needs to be part of a group, with accepted and respected relationships. Some men join foreign legions for adventure; still more swear on a bit of paper in order to acquire a framework of duties and obligations, customs and taboos, a time to work and a time to loaf, a comrade to dispute with and a sergeant to hate—in short, to belong.”

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 13, “No more privacy than a guppy in an aquarium”, p. 126

“As for population, every major shortcoming of our native planet could be traced to one cause: too many people, not enough planet.”

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 7, “The Detour” (p. 83)

“Every technology goes through three stages: first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final stage of smooth simplicity and efficient performance based on correct understanding of natural laws and proper design therefrom.”

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXXVIII : “—under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid—”, p. 371

Robert A. Heinlein book The Rolling Stones

Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 4, “Aspects of Domestic Engineering” (pp. 52-53)

“I glanced at the ring on my finger.
The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever … I know where I came from — but where did all you zombies come from?”

Robert A. Heinlein book "—All You Zombies—"

"—All You Zombies—" (1958)

“We don’t have to be convincing—not in the sense of getting converts. Real converts might prove to be a nuisance. We just have to be convincing enough to look like a legitimate religion to our overlords. And that doesn’t have to be very convincing. All religions look equally silly from the outside.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 6 (p. 70)

“But as grandpop always said, there are just three ways to get ahead; sweat and genius, getting born into the right family, or marrying into it.”

“There is no subject inappropriate for scientific research. Johann, we’ve let you fellows have a monopoly of such matters for too long. The most serious questions in the world have been left to faith or speculation. It is time for scientists to cope with them, or admit that science is no more than pebble counting.”

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 8, “Three Ways to Get Ahead” (p. 82)

“I don’t think Father Hugo is any more mistaken than the most learned theologian and he might be closer to the truth. Jacob, I don’t think anyone knows Who’s in charge.”

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 11, “—then a man is something more than his genes!”, p. 111

“Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.”

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 26, p. 459

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 5

“Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called "morals." Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.
You, too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul — and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code… so automatically your stomach did flip-flops… and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong. Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

"Jubal Harshaw"
Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

“I guess I don’t understand women.”

“A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright.”

“That’s an understatement.”
Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 19, “A Friend in Need” (p. 211)

Robert A. Heinlein book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

Richard Ames; chapter 9, p. 108
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

“I’m not going to give up my gun. Dad wouldn’t want me to. I’m sure of that. Anyhow, I’m licensed and I don’t have to. I’m a qualified marksman, I’ve passed the psycho tests, and I’ve taken the oath; I’m as much entitled to wear a gun as he is.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Red Planet

Source: Red Planet (1949), Chapter 4, “Lowell Academy”, p. 55

“A military hierarchy automatically places a premium on conservative behavior and dull conformance with precedent; it tends to penalize original and imaginative thinking.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 9 “Long Haul”, p. 101

““I wish Doc Pickering was here.”
“Yeah, and if fish had feet, they’d be mice.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 14 “The Natives are Friendly...”, p. 160

“People have a funny habit of taking as ‘natural’ whatever they are used to—but there hasn’t been any ‘natural’ environment, the way they mean it, since men climbed down out of trees.”

“Oh Max, you large lout, you arouse the eternal maternal in me.”

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 2, “The Green-Eyed Monster” (p. 21)

“Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty”

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 17, “Charity” (p. 185)

Robert A. Heinlein book Double Star

Double Star (1956)

“Max opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “No.”
“Speak louder. You used a word I don’t understand.””

“I missed my slipstick. Dad says that anyone who can't use a slide rule is a cultural illiterate and should not be allowed to vote. Mine is a beauty — a K&E 20-inch Log-log Duplex Decitrig. Dad surprised me with it after I mastered a ten-inch polyphase. We ate potato soup that week — but Dad says you should always budget luxuries first. I knew where it was. Home on my desk.”

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 9, “Chartman Jones” (p. 95)

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 7

“Mass psychology is not simply a summation of individual psychologies; that is a prime theorem of social psychodynamics—not just my opinion; no exception has ever been found to this theorem. It is the social mass-action rule, the mob-hysteria law, known and used by military, political, and religious leaders, by advertising men and prophets and propagandists, by rabble rousers and actors and gang leaders, for generations before it was formulated in mathematical symbols. It works.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Methuselah’s Children (p. 535)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

“Any cipher can be broken, any code can be compromised. But the most exact academic knowledge of a language gives no clue to its slang, its colloquial allusions, its half statements, over statements, and inverted meanings.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 9 (p. 113)

“I think girls should be raised in the bottom of a deep, dark sack until they are old enough to know better.”

““Scheer, are you any good at counterfeiting?”
“I’ve never tried it, sir.”
“No time like the present. Every man needs an alternative profession.””

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 4, “Captain DeLongPre” (p. 50)

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 6 (p. 72)

“Mr. Jones, has it ever occurred to you, the world being what it is, that women sometimes prefer not to appear too bright?”

“Wherever there is power and mass to manipulate, Man can live.”

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 19, “A Friend in Need” (p. 211)

Robert A. Heinlein book The Rolling Stones

Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 16, “Rock City” (p. 208)

“I’m not trying to frighten you, but only a fool makes predictions based on ignorance; I am not that sort of fool.”

“Pioneers need good neighbors.”

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 12, p. 177

“The attack should not have happened, of course. The rice farmer sergeant had been perfectly right; the Federation could not afford to risk its own great cites to punish the villagers of Venus. He was right—from his viewpoint.
A rice farmer has one logic; the men who live by and for power have another and entirely different logic. Their lives are built on tenuous assumptions, fragile as reputation; they could not afford to ignore a challenge to their power—the Federation could not afford not to punish the insolent colonists.”

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 14, “Land of My Own” (p. 147)

“Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive—and unpredictable.”

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 10, “While I Was Musing the Fire Burned” (p. 113)

“There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that’s philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that’s science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy’s Law, sometimes offset in part by Brewster’s Factor: that’s engineering.”

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 26, p. 452

“Horses can manufacture more horses and that is one trick that tractors have never learned.”

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XLVIII : L’Envoi or Rev. XXII: 13, p. 508

“Chief, perhaps it would be clearest to say that the fasarta modulates the garbab in such a phase relationship that the thrimaleen is forced to bast—or, to put it another way, somebody loosed mice in the washroom. Seriously, there is no popular way to explain it. If you were willing to spend five hard years with me, working up through the math, I could probably bring you to the same level of ignorance and confusion that I enjoy.”

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 18, “Pioneer Party” (p. 187)

“She grabbed him by both ears and kissed him quickly, then ran away.
Don stared after her, rubbing his mouth. Girls, he reflected, were much odder than dragons. Probably another race entirely.”

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 17, “To Reset the Clock” (p. 176)