Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Does history record any case in which the majority was right?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

204. “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

205. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

208. “Sense is never common.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

209. “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

210. “Never try to outstubborn a cat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

211. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

215. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

217. “Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

218. “Analogy is even slipperier than logic.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

219. “Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

220. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

222. “Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed – to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

223. “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

224. “Audacity, always audacity – soundest principal of strategy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

225. “He’s an honest politician – he stays bought.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

226. “Civilians are like beans; you buy ’em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy. But you can’t buy fighting spirit.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

227. “A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

228. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

230. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

232. “Behind every mystery lies another mystery.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

233. “Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

235. “A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it – it keeps him upright.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

236. “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

237. “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

238. “I am only an egg.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

239. “Democracy can survive anything except Democrats.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

241. “One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

243. “Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

247. “If you pray hard enough, water will run uphill. How hard? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

248. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein