Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

153. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

156. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

161. “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.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

165. “Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

167. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

174. “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

175. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

181. “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

182. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

184. “Sense is never common.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

186. “He went on to Jubal, “ ‘Thou art God.’ It’s not a message of cheer and hope, Jubal. It’s a defiance – and an unafraid unabashed assumption of personal responsibility.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

189. “Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

190. “If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

191. “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

192. “Never try to outstubborn a cat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

193. “Analogy is even slipperier than logic.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

194. “An animal so poor in spirit that he won’t even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

195. “Anyone can see a forest fire. Skill lies in sniffing the first smoke.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

196. “The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

197. “The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion – in the long run, these are the only people who count.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

198. “More people worry themselves to death than bleed to death.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

199. “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

200. “Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you.”

— Robert A. Heinlein