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

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

308. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

313. “The early worm deserves the bird.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

323. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

325. “Every general prohibition creates its bootleggers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

327. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

332. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

334. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

337. “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

338. “Everybody lies about sex.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

341. “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

342. “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

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. “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

345. “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

346. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

348. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

350. “The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.”

— Robert A. Heinlein