Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “I don’t know Who is cranking; I’m pleased He doesn’t stop.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

404. “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

405. “I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

406. “Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

407. “It’s an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

408. “I say ‘art’ advisedly, for art is undefined, undefinable, and without limits. I can use the word without fear of misusing it, for it has no exact meaning. There are as many meanings as there are artists.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

409. “Women talk when they want to. Or don’t.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

410. “I am not going to talk about religious beliefs, but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

411. “We have had enough guesses; I’ll state the obvious: 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. And that is the one practical difference. He may fail in wisdom, he may lapse in civic virtue. But his average performance is enormously better than that of any other class of rulers in history.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

412. “A boy who gets a C- in ‘Appreciation of Television’ can’t be all bad.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

413. “Figure out for yourself what you want to be really good at, know that you’ll never really satisfy yourself that you’ve made it, and accept that that’s okay.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

414. “Working because you want to is the best sort of play.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

415. “Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse – and without examining evidence which their “common sense” told them was impossible.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

416. “The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

417. “Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

418. “What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well- intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

419. “A poisonous snake is not dangerous, not any more than a loaded gun is dangerous – in each case, if you handle it properly. The thing that made that coral snake dangerous was that I hadn’t known what it was, what it could do. If, in my ignorance, I had handled it carelessly, it would have killed me as casually and as innocently as a kitten scratches.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

420. “But that would have left no choice. This was contradiction; at cusp, choice is. By choice, spirit grows.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

421. “The Mother Thing makes our world.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

422. “Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion, in the long run these are the only people who count.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

423. “When I don’t understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

424. “But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

425. “I know where I came from – but where did all you zombies come from?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

426. “Oh, my God!” “Compose yourself.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

427. “I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It’s a common failing.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

428. “Have you ever noticed how much they look like orchids? lovely!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

429. “Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

430. “A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

431. “Take care of the cojones and the frijoles will take care of themselves. Try to have getaway money – but don’t be fanatic about it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

432. “Correct morality can only be derived from what man is – not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

433. “Sin is cruelty and injustice, all else is peccadillo. Oh, a sense of sin comes from violating the customs of your tribe. But breaking custom is not sin even when it feels so; sin is wronging another person.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

434. “All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts: those who know this and those who do not.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

435. “Money is the sincerest of all flattery. Women love to be flattered. So do men.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

436. “Ability is a wonderful thing, but its value is greatly enhanced by dependability. Ability implies repeatability and accountability.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

437. “A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

438. “The basic of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

439. “Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

440. “People who are busy and happy don’t write diaries; they are too busy living.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

441. “No woman ever ages beyond eighteen in her heart.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

442. “Money is a powerful aphrodisiac but flowers work almost as well.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

443. “I object to conscription the way a lobster objects to boiling water: it may be his finest hour but it’s not his choice.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

444. “The more you love, the more you can love – and the more intensely you love.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

445. “Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

446. “He’s as weird as snake’s suspenders but sweet as a stolen kiss, too.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

447. “I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

448. “Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

449. “A girl’s name ending in ‘a’ – that always suggests a ‘C’ cup.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

450. “Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.”

— Robert A. Heinlein