Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She's a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more pay check. She's a twelve-year-old trying to mother her brothers and sisters because mama had to go to Heaven. She's a switchboard operator sticking to her post while smoke chokes her and fire cuts off her escape. She's all the unsung heroes who couldn't make it but never quit.

He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power.

Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed—to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience.

The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion

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.

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

Death isn't funny. Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.

Audacity, always audacity - soundest principal of strategy.

Oh, you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay attention if it's free.

God forbid that I should ever be a good influence on anybody.

Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it good. He wished that government would wander off and get lost! (96)

doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later.

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.

Must be yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please.

I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.

Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive.

Drop dead-but first get permit

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

Were you born stupid, Heinrich, or did you have to study?

I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code--monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth--then fiddle with details...even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight! (p.365)

A motion to adjourn is always in order.

The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for---if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most.