Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The lessons of history teach us – if the lessons of history teach us anything – that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

53. “A motion to adjourn is always in order.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

54. “May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

55. “Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance –.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

56. “The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

57. “The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

58. “Secrecy begets tyranny.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

59. “You do not truly own anything that you can’t carry in both arms at a dead run.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

60. “Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet you can’t win.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

61. “Never cast pearls before swine.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

62. “The moral difference between a soldier and a civilian is that the soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member. The civilian does not.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

63. “Never insult anyone by accident.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

64. “Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

65. “Heinlein’s Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

66. “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

67. “Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

68. “The meek shall inherit the earth – a 6 foot plot above them.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

69. “Finish what you start. Keep submitting until it sells.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

70. “No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

71. “An armed society is a polite society.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

72. “Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

73. “Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow if tomorrow might improve the odds.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

74. “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.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

75. “It is impossible for anyone to be responsible for another person’s behavior. The most you or any leader can do is to encourage each one to be responsible for himself.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

76. “The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

78. “Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

79. “There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

80. “Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

81. “Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

82. “My old man taught me two things: ‘Mind own business’ and ‘Always cut cards.’”

— Robert A. Heinlein

83. “Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

84. “Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

85. “Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

86. “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

87. “It’s amazing how much ‘mature wisdom’ resembles being too tired.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

88. “If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another – but which one? Differences are crucial.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

89. “Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

90. “Tilting at windmills hurts you more than the windmills.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

91. “I think that science fiction has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

92. “The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

93. “Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

94. “In a mature society, ‘civil servant’ is semantically equal to ‘civil master.’”

— Robert A. Heinlein

95. “Death is the lot of us all, and the only way that the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all Eternity.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

97. “Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

98. “A pacifist male is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described “pacifists” are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

99. “Touch is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, or taste, and no human ever ceases to need it. Keep your children short on pocket money but long on hugs.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

100. “When the citizens of a nation will no longer volunteer to defend it, then it is probably not worth saving. No nation has the right to survive with conscript troops, and in the long run, no nation ever has.”

— Robert A. Heinlein