Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

I don't gamble, if you will concede that poker is a game of skill.

To Mahmoud, Harshaw looked like a museum exhibit of what he thought of as a "Yank"—vulgar, dressed too informally for the occasion, loud, probably ignorant and almost certainly provincial. A professional man, too, which made it worse, as in Dr. Mahmoud's experience most American professional men were under-educated and narrow, mere technicians.

They tell a story, probably not true, about a cap trooper who was sight-seeing in Paris. He visited Les Invalides, looked down at Napoleon's coffin, and said to a French guard there: Who's he? The Frenchman was properly scandalized. Monsieur does not know? This is the tomb of Napoleon! Napoleon Bonaparte! The greatest soldier who ever lived! The cap trooper thought about it. Then he asked, So? Where were his drops?

We came here for a quiet, small, informal meeting—strictly business. We find you've turned it into a circus. Well, if you're going to have a circus, you've got to have elephants and there's no two ways about it.

Correct or not, he felt himself to be a useless pensioner, an impotent object of charity.

If it has to be done, a man—a real man—shoots his own dog himself; he doesn't

Find out what you want to do, then do it. Never talk yourself into doing something you don't want. Think

The culture known as "America" had a split personality throughout its history. Its laws were puritanical; its covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were Apollonian; its revivals were almost Dionysian. In the twentieth century (Terran Christian Era) nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed—and nowhere was there such deep interest in it.

Jubal, you talk like a harem guard trying to convince a whole man of the advantages of being a eunuch.

Prof's purpose was to short him out – but sometimes Prof was too subtle; some people talk better if they breathe vacuum.

Religion is a solace to many and it is conceivable that some religion, somewhere, is Ultimate Truth. But being religious is often a form of conceit. The

It is a region of high plains and of mountains, having limited fertility but esteemed for natural beauty. Its

Hell, was no military man; was computer technician who had bumbled into wrong field.

Can a machine be so frightened and hurt that it will go into catatonia and refuse to respond? While ego crouches inside, aware but never willing to risk it? No, can't be that; Mike was unafraid – as gaily unafraid as Prof.

We necessarily sift a great many pebbles, much sand, for each nugget—but the nuggets

That we were slaves I had known all my life—and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold—but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep.

For some tense moments it seemed that we were going to be hanged or shot or at least locked up forever in their deepest dungeon for the crime of not being Californians.

That old saw about "To understand all is to forgive all" is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them. My

sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive

from the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which overcrowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness. Plague is a nasty death but a quick one. Starvation also is a nasty death…but a very slow one.

Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.

he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy.

A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!