Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

202. “But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

204. “Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

205. “Never try to outstubborn a cat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

206. “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

207. “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

208. “Analogy is even slipperier than logic.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

211. “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

212. “Of all the creatures on this planet none is more dangerous than a human being.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

215. “My old man says when it’s time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

216. “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

217. “Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it’s supposed to do.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

218. “Behind every mystery lies another mystery.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

219. “Since when was an emotional argument won by logic?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

220. “There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can’t poke his nose into-that’s the way we’re built and I assume that there’s some reason for that.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

222. “Widows are far better than brides. They don’t tell, they won’t yell, they don’t swell, they rarely smell, and they’re grateful as hell.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

223. “I am only an egg.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

224. “The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

225. “When the need arises – and it does – you must be able to shoot your own dog.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

227. “Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

229. “The only thing privacy laws accomplish is making the bugs smaller.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

230. “That old saw about the early bird just proves that the worm should have stayed in bed.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

231. “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

232. “Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

233. “For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

234. “Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

235. “When railroading time comes you can railroad – but not before.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

236. “Cast me into a dungeon;, burn me at the state, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives – but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

237. “Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

238. “Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament- it is possible to be both. How? By never taking an unnecessary chance and by minimizing the risks you can’t avoid. This permits you to play out the game untroubled by the certainty of the outcome.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

239. “A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

240. “A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

241. “Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

242. “When it don’t rain, the roof don’t leak; when it rains, I can’t fix it nohow.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

243. “Always store beer in a dark place.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

244. “Budget the luxuries first.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

245. “Magic is not science, it is a collection of ways to do things ways that work but often we don’t know why.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

246. “Women will forgive anything. Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

247. “The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

248. “I don’t see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn’t anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

249. “Why do some people act as if making money offended their delicate minds? I am out for a legitimate profit, and not ashamed of it; the fact that people will pay money for my goods and services shows that my work is useful.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

250. “To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.”

— Robert A. Heinlein