Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 8 of 10

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

353. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

360. “Everybody lies about sex.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

362. “Do this. Don’t do that. Stay back in line. Where’s tax receipt? Fill out form. Let’s see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead – but first get permit.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

363. “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

364. “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

Featured in: Country Quotes

365. “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

366. “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

367. “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

368. “What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

369. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

371. “Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

373. “Thinking doesn’t pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

374. “Teaching causes people to go into situations from which they cannot escape, except by thinking. Do not handicap children by making their lives easy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

375. “Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

376. “From my point of view, a great deal of openly expressed piety is insufferable conceit.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

377. “The mind’s ability to rationalize it’s own shortcomings is unlimited; I am no exception.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

378. “With eternity to draw on there could be no reason for hurrying – ‘hurry’ was not a concept in Martian.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

379. “In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is to never let them find out.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

380. “The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

381. “Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn’t forbidden.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

382. “Of all the strange ‘crimes’ that human beings have legislated out of nothing, ‘blasphemy’ is the most amazing – with ‘obscenity’ and ‘indecent exposure’ fighting it out for second and third place.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

383. “Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don’t get any argument but you don’t get results either.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

384. “One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

385. “He ate what was set before him.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

386. “Boats and ships are female because they are beautiful, lovable, expensive and unpredictable.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

387. “How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

388. “Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

389. “It takes two to create a heaven, but hell can be accomplished by one.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

390. “Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

391. “If you do not believe that a man will commit murder for one can of tomatoes, then you have never been hungry.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

392. “In a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

393. “There will always be survivors.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

394. “Oh, you have to charge ’em, Jubal. The marks won’t pay attention if it’s free.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

395. “The less respect an older person deserves the more certain he is to demand it from anyone younger.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

396. “It’s better to copulate than not.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

397. “Never encourage a man to cook breakfast; it cause him to wonder if women are necessary.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

398. “When you’re rich, you don’t have friends; you just have endless acquaintances.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

399. “An invention is something that was “impossible” up to then that’s why governments grant patents.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

400. “Logic is a feeble reed, friend.”

— Robert A. Heinlein