Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."

"Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done."

"I never learned from a man who agreed with me."

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own... 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."

"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."

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

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

"Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events."

"One man's 'magic' is another man's engineering. 'Supernatural' is a null word."

"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship."

"Sex without love is merely healthy exercise."

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."

"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere."

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."

"Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again."

"One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen."

"They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday."

"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."

"Never insult anyone by accident."

"The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract."

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."

"By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity."

"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."

"Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy."

"One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others."

"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss."

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything."

"To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."

"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."