Robert A. Heinlein: Use

Robert A. Heinlein was American science fiction author. Explore interesting quotes on use.
Robert A. Heinlein: 1114 quotes68 likes

“Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.”

Robert A. Heinlein

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

“Er, will your grandmother tell that fib for you?”
“I guess so. Yes, I'm sure she will. She says people have to tell little white fibs or else people couldn’t stand each other. But she says fibs were meant to be used, not abused.”

Robert A. Heinlein

“She sounds like a sensible person.”
Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 11

“Mary? After all, what was she? Just another babe. True, I was disgusted with her for letting herself be used as bait. It was all right for her to use her femaleness as an agent; the Section had to have female operatives. There have always been female spies, and the young and pretty ones have always used the same tools.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Puppet Masters

Source: The Puppet Masters (1951), Chapter 10 (p. 61)

“All humans are created unequal. You are bigger and stronger than Pop; I am bigger and stronger than Hilda. I have the least years of experience; Pop has the most. Pop is a super-genius…but he concentrates so hard that he forgets to eat…unless he has a nursemaid to watch him—as Mama did, as I did, as Hilda now does. You, sir, are the all-around most competent man I’ve ever met, whether driving a duo, or dancing, or telling outrageous tales. Three of us have eight or nine earned degrees…but Aunt Hilda with none is a walking encyclopedia from insatiable curiosity and extraordinary memory. We two are baby factories and you two are not—but two men can impregnate fifty women—or five hundred. There is no end to the ways that we four are unequal.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXXI : “—the first ghosts ever to search for an obstetrician.”, p. 321

“I counted to ten slowly, using binary notation.”

Robert A. Heinlein

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

“Friday, don't despise assassins indiscriminately. As with any tool, merit or demerit lies in how it is used.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Friday (1983)

“I've heard all the usual Sweetness and Light that kids get pushed at them—how they should always forgive, how there’s some good in the worst of us, etc. But when I see a black widow, I step on it; I don’t plead with it to be a good little spider and please stop poisoning people. A black widow spider can’t help it—but that’s the point.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 10

““What sort of a remark?”
“Just priestly mumbo-jumbo. Impressive and no real meaning. Can you do it?”
“I think so—I used to sell magazine subscriptions.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Sixth Column

Source: Sixth Column (1949; originally serialized in 1941), Chapter 10 (p. 127)

““You have us going faster than light.”
“I thought the figures were a bit large.””

Robert A. Heinlein book The Rolling Stones

Source: The Rolling Stones (1952), Chapter 8, “The Mighty Room” (p. 100)

“Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“When I was a young student, I thought modern psychology could tell me the answers, but I soon found out that the best psychologists didn’t know a damn thing about the real core of the matter. Oh, I am not disparaging the work that has been done; it was badly needed and had been very useful in its way. None of ’em know what life is, what thought is, whether free will is a reality or an illusion, or whether that last question means anything. The best of ’em admit their ignorance; the worst of them make dogmatic assertions that are obvious absurdities.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Lost Legacy

Lost Legacy (p. 284)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“I used to wonder what it was like to be rich. Now I am and it turns out to be mostly headaches.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Citizen of the Galaxy

Source: Citizen of the Galaxy (1957), Chapter 20 (p. 224)

“But I do not willingly involve us in nationalistic wars; the side of the angels is seldom self-evident.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

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

“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)

“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)