Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

Smith felt distressed at the failure to respond in kind and interpreted it as failure on his own part. He realized miserably that, time after time, he had managed to bring agitation to these other creatures when his purpose had been to create oneness.

I had never been much interested in Pluto, too few facts and too much isolation.

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

If you turn out to be useful as well as ornamental, you can stay forever.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

In the course of nearly a century of gusty living he had been broke many times, had several times been wealthier than he now was; he regarded both conditions as he did shifts in the weather, and never counted his change.

He did not expect reasonable conduct from human beings; he considered most people fit candidates for protective restraint and wet packs. He simply wished heartily that they would leave him alone!—all but the few he chose for playmates. He was firmly convinced that, left to himself, he would have long since achieved nirvana . . . dived into his own belly button and disappeared from view, like those Hindu jokers. Why couldn't they leave a man alone?

Dorcas, for the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, useless, no-good parasite." She nodded and yawned again. "Everybody knows that." "Never mind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to stop being sensible—a time to stand up and be counted—strike a blow for liberty—smite the wicked.

There is no such thing as a humane war.

Unexpected discorporation was always rare on Mars; Martian taste in such matters called for life to be a rounded whole, with physical death taking place at the appropriate and selected instant. This artist, however, had become so preoccupied with his work that he had forgotten to come in out of the cold; by the time his absence was noticed his body was hardly fit to eat. He himself had not noticed his own discorporation and had gone right on composing his sequence.

Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in "measurements" when he did not know what he was measuring.

It's a shock to have it proved to you that you can't resist seducing yourself.

It doesn't make sense. Or, rather, it makes just one kind of sense. Hanky-panky. Ben is as used to hanky-panky as a bride is to kisses. He didn't get to be one of the best winchells in the business through playing his cards face up.

That boy skates close to the edge, he always has. He's utterly fearless and that's how he's made his reputation. But the rabbit is never more than two jumps ahead of the coyote . . 

Don't bawl over Ben—not in my presence. 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.

Spaceships are for acrobats who are also mathematicians.

There is an old song which asserts that 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted . . . and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.

I wish we had somebody here who never would be missed. Regrettably we are all friends.

Could dump two Chinee down in one of our maria and they would get rich selling rocks to each other while raising twelve kids. Then a Hindu would sell retail stuff he got from them wholesale--below cost at a fat profit. We got along.

Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with her first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world.

The practical reason for continuing our system is the same as the practical reason for continuing anything: It works satisfactorily. "Nevertheless

You evaded my question." "Then perhaps you had better assume that I intended to evade it.

Simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it a 'good.

She hesitated slightly. "I've seen what was called telekinesis with dice—but I'm no mathematician and I could not testify that what I saw was telekinesis." "Hell's bells, you wouldn't testify that the sun had risen if the day was cloudy.