Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

102. “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

103. “A desire not to butt into other people’s business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

104. “The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

105. “Women are amazing creatures-sweet, soft, gentle, and far more savage than we are.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

106. “Never frighten a little man. He’ll kill you.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

107. “One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Featured in: Clever Quotes

108. “If you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people. – Lazarus Long.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

109. “Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

110. “To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

111. “Live and learn, or you don’t live long.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

112. “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.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

113. “Humans 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

114. “My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

115. “The best things in history are accomplished by people who get tired of being shoved around.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

116. “To assess the intelligence of a committee, divide the IQ of its stupidest member by the number of members.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

117. “Anything free is worth what you pay for it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

118. “Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

119. “Never try to have the last word. You might get it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

120. “Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

121. “The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That’s a personal evaluation, of course.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

122. “Take your time and do it right, even if it takes another half second.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

123. “Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

124. “Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

125. “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.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

126. “Faith is intellectual laziness.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

127. “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 – and quickly.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

128. “Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination – devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues – which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

129. “First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

130. “Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

131. “People usually believe anything that they are told early and often.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

132. “Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

133. “Once you get to earth orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere in the solar system.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

134. “Life is short, but the years are long.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Featured in: Life Is Short Quotes

135. “A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

136. “Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime – and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

137. “Coffee comes in five descending stages: Coffee, Java, Jamoke, Joe, and Carbon Remover.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

138. “A human being has no natural rights of any nature.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Featured in: Rights Quotes

139. “They didn’t want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

140. “Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

141. “The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone’s opinion is worth the same.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

142. “Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal – else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

143. “There is no safety this side of the grave.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

144. “I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth – then shut up.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

145. “Most gods have the morals of a spoiled child.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

146. “Anything free costs twice as much in the long run or turns out worthless.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

147. “Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

148. “Unarmed hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

149. “Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not – and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

150. “We each have a moral obligation to conserve and preserve beauty in this world; there is none to waste.”

— Robert A. Heinlein