Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “ANYTHING will burn with enough gasoline and dynamite.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

202. “Sense is never common.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

204. “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

205. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

207. “Never try to outstubborn a cat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

210. “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

211. “Analogy is even slipperier than logic.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

213. “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

214. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

218. “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

219. “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

220. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

222. “Behind every mystery lies another mystery.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

225. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

227. “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

228. “I am only an egg.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

234. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

237. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

240. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

242. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

244. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

249. “Budget the luxuries first.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

250. “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