Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

All those religions--they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying.

It's a long story. Want a refill? No, let's start the steak. Where's the button? Right here. Well, push it. Me? You offered to cook. Ben Caxton, I will lie here and starve before I will get up to push a button six inches from your finger As you wish. He pressed the button. But don't forget who cooked dinner.

Prof is right; more than three people can't decide anything.

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — ie., none to speak of

Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure "good" government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the "backseat driver" syndrome.

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.

The country and culture commonly known as America had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degrees---its religious revivals were often hysterical in a fashion almost Dionysian.

Anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly.

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

But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees.

Thou art God'. It's not a message of cheer and hope. It's a defiance - and an unafraid, unabashed assumption of personal responsibility.

My vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free.

There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service.

I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure --will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage --and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart.

I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith—it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.

But, do you know, once you get used to it's rather cute. I mean, if a girl looks alright to start with, she still looks alright with her head smooth.

But if you didn't have more urgent things to do after supper [in boot camp], you could write a letter, loaf, gossip, discuss the myriad mental shortcomings of sergeants and, dearest of all, talk about the female of the species (we became convinced that there was no such creatures, just mythology created by inflamed imaginations - one boy in our company claimed to have seen a girl, over at regimental headquarters; he was unanimously judged a liar and a braggart).

Have you ever noticed how much they look like orchids? lovely!

Till the stars grow old and our sun grows cold? Will you fight for us, lie for us, love us - and let us love you?

When it don't rain, the roof don't leak; when it rains, I can't fix it nohow.

Is this Paradise?' 'I can guarantee you that it isn't,' Jubal assured him. 'My taxes are due this week.

That we were slaves I had known all my life--and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold--but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.