Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

304. “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

305. “Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

306. “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

307. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

309. “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

310. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

312. “Self awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

313. “The early worm deserves the bird.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

314. “It was better to live with disappointment and frustration than to live without hope.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

315. “Most women are damn fools and children. But they’ve got more range than we’ve got. The brave ones are braver, the good ones are better – and the vile ones are viler, for that matter.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

316. “Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman’s breasts; it enhances their charm by making them look lived in and happy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

317. “Remember though, your best weapon is between your ears and under your scalp -provided it’s loaded.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

318. “Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it’s more sanitary.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

319. “Always tell her she is beautiful, especially if she is not.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

320. “A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

321. “If tempted by something that feels ‘altruistic,’ examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

322. “God created men to test the souls of women.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

323. “Every general prohibition creates its bootleggers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

324. “Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

325. “Value’ has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human – ‘market value’ is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitively different or trade would be impossible.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

326. “The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

327. “Big money isn’t hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of single-minded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

328. “Marriage is a young man’s disaster and an old man’s comfort.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

329. “Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

330. “A family reunion is an effective form of birth control.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

331. “A zest for living must include a willingness to die.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

332. “Dr. Jubal Harshaw, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice, had long attempted to eliminate “hurry” and all related emotions from his pattern. Being aware that he had but a short time left to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in his own immortality, it was his purpose to live each golden moment as if it were eternity – without fear, without hope, but with sybaritic gusto.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

333. “I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

334. “Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

335. “I took up writing because I needed money. And I continued to write because it’s safer than stealing and easier than working.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

336. “But, whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

337. “Nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America – and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

338. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. – Second Amendment to the Constitution An armed society is a polite society.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

339. “Everybody lies about sex.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

340. “There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

341. “Between being ‘right’ and being kind, I know which way I vote.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

342. “A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

343. “If a country can’t save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say : Let the damned thing go down the drain!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

344. “No storyteller has been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

345. “Logic is a feeble reed, friend. “Logic” proved that airplanes can’t fly and that H-bombs won’t work and that stones don’t fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn’t happen yesterday won’t happen tomorrow.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

346. “In this complex world, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

347. “Straining at gnats and swallowing camels is a required course in all law schools.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

348. “Butterflies are self propelled flowers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

349. “Son, the phrase is self-contradictory; “sense” is never “common”.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

350. “Religion is a solace to many people and it is even conceivable that some religion, somewhere, really is Ultimate Truth. But in many cases, being religious is merely a form of conceit.”

— Robert A. Heinlein