Quotes from Robert A. Heinlein

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

We came here for a small, informal meeting. We find you've turned it into a circus. Well, if you're going to have a circus, you've got to have elephants.

His was not a small mind bothered by logic and consistency.

Certain types of loudmouthism should be a capital offense among decent people.

It's not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried. Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents - a depressingly low level, but what else can you expect?

A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human 'wisdom'...and the other twenty percent isn't very important.

The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.

Have you ever known me to be rude to a lady? I have seen you be intentionally rude to a woman. I have never seen you be rude to a lady.

Heroism' often consists in keeping your head in an emergency and doing the best you can with what you have instead of panicking and being shot in the tail. People who fight this way win more battles than do intentional heroes; a glory hound often throws away the lives of his mates as well as his own.

The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness.

Every general prohibition creates its bootleggers.

The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.

I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.

Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.

A boy who gets a C- in 'Appreciation of Television' can't be all bad.

Nor would anybody suspect. 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 a sense of humor.

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?

I happen to be of an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman--which means I can be a real revolving son of a bitch when it suits me.

Then I glanced at the ring on my finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

All human behavior, all human motivations, all man's hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind's tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.

I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not