Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!

Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?

Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe---in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.

Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.

He's as weird as snake's suspenders but sweet as a stolen kiss, too.

Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

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 ... But that's not all people laugh at. Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh sweetheart... a joke, or anything else- but something that gave you a a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness wasn't there. He thought. I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people.

I was not offended, my love. An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted. And pride is too heavy baggage for my journey...

I'm so busy doing what I must do that I don't have time for what I ought to do... and I never get a chance to do what I want to do! - Son, that's universal. The way to keep that recipe from killing you is occasionally to do what you want to do anyhow.

Cast me into a dungeon;, burn me at the state, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives -- but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.

It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.

As it says in the Bible, God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery.

His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.

No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own . . . and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing . . . is one that they can't or won't entertain.

The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger.

Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them.

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured.

Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

In terms of morals there is no such thing as 'state.' Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.

It's a man's business to be what he is, and to be it in style.

Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit

People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox.

Women talk when they want to. Or don't.