Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Money is truthful. If a man speaks of honor, make him pay cash.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

253. “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

254. “People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

255. “Peace is an extension of war by political means. Plenty of elbow-room is pleasanter – and much safer.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

256. “Abstract knowledge is always useful, sooner or later.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

257. “Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

258. “Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

259. “I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be – instead of the tawdry, lousy fouled-up mess it is.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

260. “Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

262. “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

263. “Responsibility cannot be shared.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

266. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

268. “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

269. “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

270. “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

271. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

277. “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

278. “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

279. “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

280. “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

281. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

284. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

286. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

288. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

290. “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

291. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

294. “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

295. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

299. “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

300. “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