Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

252. “The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

253. “Responsibility cannot be shared.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

255. “We came here for a small, informal meeting. We find you’ve turned it into a circus. Well, if you’re going to have a circus, you’ve got to have elephants.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

256. “Love is what still goes on when you’re not horny.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

257. “People usually believe anything that they are told early and often.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

258. “All cats are not gray after midnight.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

259. “God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good, and is no sillier than any other theology.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

260. “To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

261. “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

262. “I did the only really brave thing I have ever done in my life: I inched forward.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

264. “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

265. “Belief gets in the way of learning.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

266. “The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

267. “Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

269. “You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets fretful. After he pees in it, he likes the flavor better, so he buys it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

270. “What we think of as ‘Physical beauty’ is almost certainly a tag for a complex of useful survival characteristics. Smartness intelligence among them.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

271. “I have never been able to see how a thirty-year old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year old genius...”

— Robert A. Heinlein

272. “Was there ever a time when the majority was right?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

273. “Brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

274. “There are things which cannot be taught in ten easy lessons, nor popularized for the masses; they take years of skull sweat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

275. “You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but – if you will pardon my saying so – all wrong.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

276. “Nothing gives life more zest that running for your life.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

278. “A little more money won’t do you any good – because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation, regardless of the amount.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

279. “Make money, lose money – who cares? The idea is to enjoy it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

280. “A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

281. “It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

284. “I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it’s the only thing to make it stop hurting.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

286. “Marriage is a psychological condition, not a civil contract and a license. Once a marriage is dead, it is dead, and it begins to stink faster than a dead fish.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

287. “If an elderly respected expert in a given field tells you that something can be done he is almost certainly right. If an elderly respected expert in a given field tells you that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

288. “Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

290. “Only a sadistic scoundrel-or a fool-tells the bald truth on social occasions.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

291. “I don’t trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

292. “Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

293. “Math is hard work and it occupies your mind – and it doesn’t hurt to learn all you can of it, no matter what rank you are; everything of any importance is founded on mathematics.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

294. “Why don’t they make more science fiction movies? The answer to any question starting, Why don’t they- is almost always, Money.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

295. “There is no such thing as ‘social gambling.’ Either you are there to cut the other bloke’s heart out and eat it – or you’re a sucker. If you don’t like this choice – don’t gamble.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

296. “It is impossible for a man to love his wife whole heartedly without loving all women somewhat. I suppose that the converse must be true of women.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

297. “If Satan should ever replace God he would find it necessary to assume the attributes of Divinity.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

298. “By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

299. “Democracy’s worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

300. “Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules about sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein