Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

152. “Never tease an old dog; he might have one bite left.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

153. “The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

154. “Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

155. “Don’t ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun – and neither can stop the march of events.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

156. “Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

158. “Library Science is the key to all science, just as mathematics is its language – and civilization will rise or fall, depending on how well librarians do their jobs.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

159. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

161. “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

162. “Pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

163. “No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

164. “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

165. “It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

166. “Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

168. “No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

169. “The greatest productive force is human selfishness.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

170. “I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

171. “I think the major problem in growing up is to become sophisticated without becoming cynical.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

173. “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

174. “A community where everyone is a ruthless murderer, with handy access to death-dealing devices, is a very polite community.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

175. “Stupidity is the only natural capital offense.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

176. “I believe in – I am proud to belong to – the United States.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

177. “The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

178. “In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

179. “An armed man need not fight.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

180. “In a family argument, if it turns out you are right, apologize at once.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

181. “Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

182. “How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

183. “Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

184. “Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can’t have what you’ve got coming to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don’t rate it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

185. “Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong – but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

186. “If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

187. “Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

188. “Most ‘scientists’ are bottle washers and button sorters.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

189. “Formal courtesy between husband and wife is even more important than it is between strangers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

190. “Some people insist that ‘mediocre’ is better than ‘best.’ They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can’t fly. They despise brains because they have none.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

191. “Does history record any case in which the majority was right?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

192. “Morals – all correct moral laws – derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

193. “You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

194. “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

195. “The stars incline, but do not impel.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

196. “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

197. “The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

198. “ANYTHING will burn with enough gasoline and dynamite.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

199. “Sense is never common.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

200. “Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein