Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

There's precious little choice." "There's always a choice! This one is a choice between 'bad' and 'worse—'which is a difference much more poignant than that between 'good' and 'better.

The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable—from table tapping to the superiority of their own children—has never been plumbed. Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it—especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.

English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it. Nobody tried to stop this process, the way some languages are policed and have official limits . . . probably because there never has been, truly, such a thing as 'the King's English'—for 'the King's English' was French. English was in truth a bastard tongue and nobody cared how it grew . . . and it did!—enormously.

An Englishman and an Arab can learn to think each other's thoughts, in the other's language.

Big money isn't hard to come by. All it costs is a lifetime of single-minded devotion to acquiring it and making it grow into more money, to the utter exclusion of all other interests.

Captain, that's not your style; you don't want to make money, you simply want to have money—in order to spend it.

A man who bets on greed an dishonesty won't be wrong too often.

the human mind's ability to rationalize its own shortcomings into virtues is unlimited

Indian government seemed as furious over fish as fishermen – but principle of sacredness of all life did not apply to us; they wanted our heads.

Jubal had long ago even foresworn pets, because he outlived them, or (worse yet) it was now possible that a pet would outlive him, be orphaned.

I hope he's just a scoundrel . . . because a saint can stir up ten times as much mischief as a scoundrel.

But, Jill, if a thing is sinful on Sunday, it is sinful on Friday—at least it groks that way to an outsider, myself—or perhaps to a man from Mars.

a government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back.

Richard, Bill has the socialist disease in its worst form; he thinks the world owes him a living. He told me sincerely - smugly! - that of course everyone was entitled to the best possible medical and hospital service - free of course, unlimited of course, and of course the government should pay for it.

they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence.

sometimes there just isn't any cure for a situation.

But, to tell the truth, a soldier doesn't notice a war much more than a civilian does, except his own tiny piece of it and that just on the days it is happening.

You don't pay back, you pay forward.

Hendrick, I have explained these matters to you because it is useless to punish a man unless he knows why he is being punished.

A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.

A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive—and nowhere else!—and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.

was no such thing as a "dangerous weapon," there were only dangerous men.

the trouble with "lessons from history" is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins.