Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

However, you are just as dead if you buy a farm in an "incident" as you are if you buy it in a declared war.

I would be—and will be—much disappointed in you if you ever simply injure a policeman. A wounded policeman is more dangerous than a wounded lion.

The Mother Thing makes our world.

adult delinquents—people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.

Poor old Agnes! So ambitious. He guessed he had been quite a disappointment to her . . . and no doubt the change of life wasn't making things any easier for her. Well, at least she was loyal, right to her toes . . . and we all have our shortcomings; she was probably as sick of him as he—no point in that!

But that would have left no choice. This was contradiction; at cusp, choice is. By choice, spirit grows.

You don't own a cat, he is a free citizen. Take

Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.

As for the tank, not only is it unAmerican and probably subversive to eat without watching stereo but also the racket from it would interfere even with a directional mike aimed at us from a distance . . .

Once can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.

I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people—and parasites.

ago he had made a pact with himself to postulate a created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, whole paradoxical, avoided the paradoxes of the other—with a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery.

Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful—just stupid.)

was the sort of jerk who would entice a young girl with candy and consider it a smart operation.

write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. Title

His water brother could teach, admonish, guide—but choice at cusp was not shared. Here was "ownership" beyond sale, gift, hypothecation; owner and owned grokked inseparable. He eternally was the action he had taken at cusp. Now that he knew himself

But a well-run tyranny is almost as scarce as an efficient democracy.

Oh, I'm not offended. But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced flyfishing, I became too stinkin' proud to use the title. I won't touch watered whiskey and take no pride in watered-down degrees. Call me Jubal." "Oh. But the degree in medicine hasn't been watered down." "Time they called it something else, so as not to confuse it with playground supervisors.

A thing can be fine on paper but utterly crummy in the field.

Nurse, if she didn't have more money than any person ought to have, you might be tempted to call it senile dementia. As it is, she is in for a rest and a check-up.

have time to take out your soul and look at it.

Locked you in a padded cell, with a certificate signed by three doctors, and allowed you mail on alternate leap years.

I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting." Jill

There are kisses and kisses. Some are given in sport and some in passion. There are formal kisses of greeting and departure, and there are perfunctory pecks of accustomed affection. Once in a great while lips meet and two spirits merge for a time and the universe is right and complete and the planets wheel in their proper places. Once in a while the lonely, broken spirit of man is healed and made whole. For a while his quest is over and his questions are answered.