Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “If you pray hard enough, water will run uphill. How hard? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

309. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

312. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

315. “The early worm deserves the bird.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

317. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

319. “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

320. “Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe – in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

321. “Nobody has ever seen an electron. Nor a thought. You can’t see a thought, you can’t measure, weigh, nor taste it- but thoughts are the most real things in the Galaxy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

325. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

327. “Every general prohibition creates its bootleggers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

328. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

331. “Men are not potatoes!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

335. “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

336. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

341. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

343. “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

344. “Everybody lies about sex.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

345. “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

346. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

348. “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

349. “Revolution is an art that I pursue rather than a goal I expect to achieve. Nor is this a source of dismay; a lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

350. “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