Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

To prove that degrees, per se, are worthless. Often they are honorifics of true scientists or learned scholars or inspired teachers. Much more frequently they are false faces for overeducated jackasses.

When will I learn? Had Boss wished to disclose the method, he would have told me. "Careless slips sink ships." Not around Boss.)

Some things—and some people—are not supposed to change.

I remember thinking, "Gosh, that's terrible!" and feeling sorry for the one Porteño in the ship. But B.A. wasn't my home and Terra was a long way off and I was very busy, as the attack on Klendathu, the Bugs' home planet, was mounted immediately after that and we spent the time to rendezvous strapped in our bunks, doped and unconscious, with the internal-gravity field of the Valley Forge off, to save power and give greater speed.

The Colorado River was at a record low and the towers in Lake Mead stood high out of the water. But the Angelenos committed communal suicide by watering lawns as usual.

But things were not money, any more than water shared was growing-closer. Money was an idea, as abstract as an Old One's thoughts—money was a great structured symbol for balancing and healing and growing closer.

Do You Have a PROBLEM? Nothing is illegal—it isn't what you do; it's the way that you do it.

He ate what was set before him

Fortunately for all of us you did not stay dead.

anyone who "won" a family argument had in fact lost it.

no better way to improve breed. Certain types of loudmouthism should be a capital offense among decent people.

Don't grunt; it is not pleasing in a young woman.

It's much safer to break a law knowingly than to do so through ignorance.

Don't bang your head against a stone wall." He might add: "Climb over, go around, tunnel under, knock a hole in it—and if nothing works, forget it! Change your plans. Or take a nap. But don't get ulcers.

If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with sense of humor.

I don't pay attention to politics." "You should. It's barely less important than your own heart beat." "I

I had come to realize that they either didn't care or wouldn't care. All that mattered to them was whether or not you were part of Boss's outfit.

That's exactly why we have to have you, Colonel - to solve problems that are elementary to a man of your genius - Ardmore felt slightly nauseated inside: this was worse than writing advertising copy - but which are miracles for the rest of us.

His profession makes him feel like boss of a creation; when he sets foot dirtside he is slumming among the peasants. As for his sartorial inelegance, a man who is in uniform nine-tenths of the time and is more used to deep space than to civilization can hardly be expected to know how to dress properly.

His profession makes him feel like boss of all creation; when he sets foot dirtside he is slumming among the peasants. As for his sartorial inelegance, a man who is in uniform nine-tenths of the time and is more used to deep space than to civilization can hardly be expected to know how to dress properly.

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. Mike considered this. "Then

Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws—always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up.

My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases Jubal Harshaw.

more than six people cannot agree on anything, three is better—and one is perfect for a job that one can do. This is why parliamentary bodies all through history, when they accomplished anything, owed it to a few strong men who dominated the rest.