Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.

Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

The more you love, the more you can love--and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.

Live and learn, or you don't live long.

Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.

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

If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.

If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

Remember though, your best weapon is between your ears and under your scalp -provided it's loaded.

I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.

Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.

Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.

A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

God created men to test the souls of women.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.

Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.

He's an honest politician--he stays bought.

Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet you can't win.

I came, I saw, she conquered. The original Latin seems to have been garbled.

The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up.