Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

Samuel Clemens put it: Where she was, there was Eden. Omar phrased it: -thou beside me in the wilderness, ah wilderness were paradise enow. Browning termed it Summum Bonum. All were asserting the same great truth, which is for me: Heaven is where Margrethe is.

Take your time and do it right, even if it takes another half second.

An air car was just landing in the garden by the pool and beings under it were complaining of injuries and indignities done them. Perhaps this was the trouble he could feel? Grasses were for walking on, flowers and bushes were not—this was a wrongness.

Admittedly, what he had seen only the day before in this very room was just as intellectually stupefying as these later events—but the emotional impact was something else. A mouse was as much a miracle of biology as was an elephant; nevertheless there was an important difference—an elephant was bigger.

Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability against all competition...The Universe will let us know-later-whether Man has any right to expand through it.

A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom . . . and the other twenty percent isn't very important.

Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy—in fact, they're almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Both at once can produce unbearable turmoil—and

I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue?

I always get the shakes before a drop.

Jill tried to reswallow her stomach.

Duke, almost the only human characteristic Mike seems to possess is an overwhelming desire to be liked.

Another common error is to identify 'Apollonian' with 'good'—merely because our most respectable sects are all rather Apollonian in ritual and precept. Mere local prejudice.

My child, a true-confession story should never be tarnished by any taint of truth.

Jubal longed for the days when a lawyer could cite the Bill of Rights and not have some over-riding Federation trickery defeat him.

It took you long enough to answer your phone." "It's my phone, Mr. Secretary. Sometimes I don't answer it at all.

Either way, I have no wish to disturb a man sleeping in a gutter; I assume until proved otherwise that he belongs there.

Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.

Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent – it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.

Television leaves no external scars.

A little more money won't do you any good—because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation, regardless of the amount. That's a widely experienced but previously unformulated law of nature, to be known henceforth as 'Harshaw's Law.

Life is short, but the years are long.

Wealth—great wealth—is a curse . . . unless you are devoted to the money-making game for its own sake. And even then it has serious drawbacks.