Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

I never learned from a man who agreed with me

It's not that easy. You can make omelet from eggs, but not eggs from omelet.

At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that "news" is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different—in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness.

Until a person, man or woman, has enjoyed this treasure bathed in the mutual bliss of minds linked as closely as bodies, that person is still as virginal and alone as if he has never copulated.

But he described our shortcomings, physical, mental, moral, and genetic, in great and insulting detail.

I made a very important discovery at Camp Currie. Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you've ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he's as happy as a worm in an apple—asleep.

There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself. Man was his own grimmest joke on himself. The very bedrock of humor was— "Man is the animal who laughs," Jubal answered.

Value' has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human—'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible.

We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time—we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will.

Every citizen is free to perform any act which does not hamper the equal freedom of another. No law shall forbid the performance of any act, which does not damage the physical or economic welfare of any other person.

It does not pay a prophet to be too specific." —L. Sprague de Camp

It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has.

What a man doesn't know he can't spill if he is captured; neither drugs, nor torture, nor brainwash, nor endless lack of sleep can squeeze out a secret he doesn't possess.

A public employee, having no self-respect, needs and demands a show of public respect.

Any custom is man-made and is therefore a finite attempt to describe an infinity of relationships. It follows as the night from day that any custom necessarily has its exceptions.

from George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra: "Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done.

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: Of course it is none of my business, but -- is to place a period after the word but.

Young man, can you restore my eyesight?" "Sir? Why, no, sir!" "You would find it much easier than to instill moral virtue—social responsibility—into a person who doesn't have it, doesn't want it, and resents having the burden thrust on him.

Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.

He's a man by ancestry, a Martian by environment.

Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem.

I'm so busy doing what I must do that I don't have time for what I ought to do . . . and I never get a chance to do what I want to do!" "Son, that's universal. The way to keep that recipe from killing you is occasionally to do what you want to do anyhow. Which is right now.

I needed a space suit the way a pig needs a pipe organ.