Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 10

151. “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

152. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

154. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

157. “Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

159. “If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

160. “Violence never settles anything should be debated by the ghosts of Hitler and Stalin, with the city fathers of Carthage as referees.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

161. “I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey...”

— Robert A. Heinlein

162. “As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

163. “Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

166. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

168. “Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

169. “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

170. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

173. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

175. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

180. “Since survival is the sine qua non, I now define the “moral behavior” as “behavior that tends toward survival”.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

188. “An armed man need not fight.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

189. “The intelligent fights only when he must and never for sport.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

191. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

193. “Take big bites. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

194. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes

195. “The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein