Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

352. “Everybody lies about sex.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

353. “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

354. “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

355. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

357. “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

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

363. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

368. “Butterflies are self propelled flowers.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

369. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

373. “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

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. “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

376. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

378. “All my enemies are self-appointed.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

381. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

386. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

389. “There will always be survivors.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

395. “The more you love, the more you can love – and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

398. “It’s a man’s business to be what he is, and to be it in style.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

399. “The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

400. “Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

— Robert A. Heinlein