Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “The shamans are forever yacking about their snake oil miracles. I prefer the real McCoy, a pregnant woman.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

452. “I’m always suspicious of disinterested interest.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

453. “Please don’t invent a debt that does not exist, or next you will be trying to feel gratitude – and that is the treacherous first step toward complete moral degradation.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

454. “If I choose to dine with publicans and sinners, that is my business. But I do not choose to break bread with Pharisees.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

455. “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.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

456. “Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage: Pay cash or do without. Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

457. “C’mon you apes, you wanna’ live forever?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

458. “Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key – and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn’t look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

459. “A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be... more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

460. “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

461. “His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

462. “Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

463. “Small change can often be found under seat cushions.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

464. “The killer looked up as the bullet hit him. He looked as if he were puzzled by some strange occurence, being too freshly dead to be aware of it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

465. “They were all three amazingly beautiful; they were also amazingly good secretaries. In Harshaw’s opinion the principle of least action required that utility and beauty be combined.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

466. “Could dump two Chinee down in one of our maria and they would get rich selling rocks to each other while raising twelve kids. Then a Hindu would sell retail stuff he got from them wholesale – below cost at a fat profit. We got along.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

467. “Gratitude is a euphemism for resentment.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

468. “If I had a Boy Scout I could make a fire by rubbing his hind legs together.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

469. “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

470. “The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

471. “Stinky says women should be obscene but not heard.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

472. “Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who’s boss.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

473. “What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

474. “If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

475. “Drop dead-but first get permit.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

476. “Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

477. “I’m a professional bad example. You can learn a lot by watching me. Or listening to me. Either one.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

478. “The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

479. “I never do anything I don’t want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

480. “Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don’t argue with it especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

481. “All human behavior, all human motivations, all man’s hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind’s tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

482. “Contemplation must bring forth right action in order to permit further growth.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

483. “Beauty is not diminished by being shared.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

484. “I don’t see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

486. “Nothing uses up alcohol faster than political argument.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

487. “There is solemn satisfaction in doing the best you can for eight billion people. Perhaps their lives have no cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

488. “My vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

489. “The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for “art” that leaves him unmoved – if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

490. “There are only five things really worth drawing; four of them are pretty girls and the fifth is cats.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

491. “His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

492. “English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

493. “Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

494. “High Frontier places a bullet-proof vest on our bare chest. High Frontier is as non-aggressive as a bullet-proof vest. There is no way to kill anyone with High Frontier – all that High Frontier can do is to keep others from killing us.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

495. “Damnit! Nationalism should stop at the stratosphere!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

496. “If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called ‘behaviorist psychology.’”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

498. “You got the impression that he never needed to sleep – just ten-thousand-mile checkups and dust him off occasionally.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

499. “The saddest thing about ephemerals was that their little lives rarely held time enough for love.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

500. “Don’t explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.”

— Robert A. Heinlein