Top 500 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “What was “grokking”? He had been using the word for a week – and he didn’t grok it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

403. “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

404. “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

405. “Well, we shoot mad dogs, don’t we?”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

407. “But a well-run tyranny is almost as scarce as an efficient democracy.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

410. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

412. “Democracy can survive anything except Democrats.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

413. “Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

417. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

419. “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

420. “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

421. “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

422. “One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

425. “If you’ve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn’t prove it.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

434. “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

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

436. “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

437. “A critic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased, he hates all creative people equally.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

440. “A paradox may be paradoctored.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

— Robert A. Heinlein

442. “Limiting the freedom of news ‘just a little bit’ is in the same category with the classic example ’a little bit pregnant.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

443. “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

444. “Men are not potatoes!”

— Robert A. Heinlein

445. “Nevertheless, once you pick up a stray cat and feed it, you cannot abandon it. Self-love forbids it. The cat’s welfare becomes essential to your own peace of mind – even when it’s a bloody nuisance not to break faith with the cat.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

446. “A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

447. “A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

448. “Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

449. “Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

450. “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