Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

Oh, whoever thought up that nonsense about 'parting is such sweet sorrow!' " "Chap by the name of Shakespeare," I said. "But he was writing for money. Anything for a tear. Or a laugh. Either way, he got paid. He killed 'em off, at the end—and got paid for that, too." "I know he did. Made me cry. What a shameful way for a grown man to make a living!

Random' and 'chance' are not related. 'Random chance' is a nonsense expression

We lived here a while. No annex then, had to have an armed guard just to pee.

am inhibited in expressing myself by the presence of a lady; therefore I cannot adequately discuss your ancestry, personal habits, morals, and destination.

I dreamed a lot and none of it made sense; I seemed to be stuck in a comic book, the sort P.T.A. meetings pass resolutions against, and the baddies were way ahead no matter what I did.

The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation

nobody has ever been able to keep a girl off her back when she decides it's time. When she decides—that's the key to the matter.

Major Reid smiled cynically. "I have never been able to see how a thirty-year-old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year-old genius . . . but that was the age of the 'divine right of the common man.' Never mind, they paid for their folly.

I'm electron pusher by trade;

Peace" is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence

The story is a post-utopia, a somewhat revolutionary form when it was published—and one reader-critic (Jamie Todd Rubin) called it "the first generally 'post-Singularity' story ever written in science fiction" (if we had not lost our faith in the American utopian vision, it might have had imitators instead of the wave after wave of dystopias we did get—and continue to get).

Department of Defense" ever won a war; see the histories. But it seems to be a standard civilian reaction to scream for defensive tactics as soon as they do notice a war. They then want to run the war—like a passenger trying to grab the controls away from the pilot in an emergency.

By the sixties everyone talked about his "rights" and no one spoke of his duties—and patriotism was a subject for jokes.

Look, kids, I've seen every possible type of joy house and pleasure dome. Happiness is in the heart, not in that stuff.

Voják pÃ…â"¢ijímá osobní odpovÄ›dnost za bezpe?nost obce, ke které pÃ…â"¢ináleží, a v pÃ…â"¢ípadÄ› nutnosti ji brání svým životem. Civilista to nedÄ›lá.

To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy--and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.

I haven't been in the slightest danger. Just lost. And now I'm found.

Thorby had two choices. Be adopted quietly or make a fuss and be adopted anyhow

Zeb should command while Jacob handled space-time controls—to each his own. Jacob had asked me to please take orders from Zeb with no back talk … which had miffed me a little.

Boss, you're nitpicking to avoid admitting that it was your fault, not mine.

Can Penny come in?"  "Oh, sure! But you can tell her that she is wasting her time; the answer is still 'No.' "  So I changed my mind. Confound it, why should an argument seem so much more logical when underlined with a whiff of Jungle Lust?

Un hombre puede adquirir una brillante reputación como conversador dejando, simplemente, que su interlocutor lleve el peso de la conversación

každá skupina je slabÅ¡í než jednotlivec, pokud nemá skvÄ›le natrénovanou spolupráci.

Seems a funny way to run things. But of course I've never paid taxes." "You just think you haven't. You started the day you were born. We may eliminate death someday but I doubt if we'll ever eliminate taxes.