Robert A. Heinlein

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the
idea.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
– Robert A. Heinlein

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a
ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort
the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.
– Robert A. Heinlein

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia
until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
– Robert A. Heinlein

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Do not confuse “duty” with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty
is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that
debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it
may be, but the reward is self-respect.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Television leaves no external scars.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do
something.
– Robert A. Heinlein

A desire not to butt into other people’s business is at least eighty percent of all human
wisdom.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive – and
unpredictable.
– Robert A. Heinlein

You’re in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Never try to outstubborn a cat.
– Robert A. Heinlein

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual” – find out how he feels about
astrology.
– Robert A. Heinlein

The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God
of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His
creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this
flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the
expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Yield to temptation… it may not pass your way again.
– Robert A. Heinlein

I came, I saw, she conquered. The original Latin seems to have been garbled.
– Robert A. Heinlein

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

Belief gets in the way of learning.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Thinking doesn’t pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.
– Robert A. Heinlein

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Once you can honestly say, “I don’t know,” then it becomes possible to get at the truth.
– Robert A. Heinlein

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

Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the
more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.
– Robert A. Heinlein

When one teaches, two learn.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for
the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy – in fact, they are
almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do,
which isn’t often, on their own, the hard way.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector – and miss.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Do this. Don’t do that. Stay back in line. Where’s tax receipt? Fill out form. Let’s see license.
Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back
and get stamped. Drop dead – but first get permit.
– Robert A. Heinlein

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.
– Robert A. Heinlein

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his
acts with his life.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not
survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?
– Robert A. Heinlein

At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not
come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that “news” is not
something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he
himself is no different – in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal
resourcefulness.
– Robert A. Heinlein

No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart.
– Robert A. Heinlein

There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk “his life, his
fortune, and his sacred honor” on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are
merely overgrown children, can never be anything else.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Never appeal to a man’s “better nature.” He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest
gives you more leverage.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any
government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not
read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy
the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this
fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not
the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can
do is kill him.
– Robert A. Heinlein

If you’ve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn’t prove it.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth stupid fumbling.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
– Robert A. Heinlein

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is
invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
– Robert A. Heinlein

We may eliminate death someday but I doubt if we’ll ever eliminate taxes.
– Robert A. Heinlein

It’s amazing how much “mature wisdom” resembles being too tired.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Delusions are often functional. A mother’s opinions about her children’s beauty, intelligence,
goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
– Robert A. Heinlein

A generation which ignores history has no past – and no future.
– Robert A. Heinlein

“Die trying” is the proudest human thing.
– Robert A. Heinlein

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

People don’t really want change, any change at all – and xenophobia is very deep-rooted. But
we progress, as we must – if we are to go out to the stars.
– Robert A. Heinlein

You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It’s a waste of time and besides it annoys the pig.
– Robert A. Heinlein

If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.
– Robert A. Heinlein

A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when
it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. The next higher level is to work, fight, and
sometimes die for your own immediate family.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
– Robert A. Heinlein

It’s impossible for a woman to lay it on too thick with a man. If you tell a man he’s eight feet
tall and say it often enough, with your eyes wide and a throb in your voice, he’ll start
stooping to go through seven-foot doors.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Another ingredient in a happy marriage: Budget the luxuries first!
– Robert A. Heinlein

Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up
with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to
men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They
should never settle merely for equality. For women, “equality” is a disaster.
– Robert A. Heinlein

There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Most women are damn fools and children. But they’ve got more range than we’ve got. The
brave ones are braver, the good ones are better – and the vile ones are viler, for that
matter.
– Robert A. Heinlein

To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Consider the black widow spider. It’s a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the
prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass
trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much
power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make
him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate.
– Robert A. Heinlein

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely
because you think it would be good for him.
– Robert A. Heinlein

God created men to test the souls of women.
– Robert A. Heinlein

There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with
a statistical universe.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it’s more sanitary.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and
evil and self-serving men.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and
morals of a spoiled child.
– Robert A. Heinlein

You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
– Robert A. Heinlein

A government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind,
unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Being privileged to work hard for long hours at something you think is worth doing is the best
kind of play.
– Robert A. Heinlein

When you’re rich, you don’t have friends; you just have endless acquaintances.
– Robert A. Heinlein

There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort
against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?
– Robert A. Heinlein

The less respect an older person deserves the more certain he is to demand it from anyone
younger.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
– Robert A. Heinlein

Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance.
– Robert A. Heinlein