Quotes By Robert A. Heinlein

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.

They didn't want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

Never insult anyone by accident.

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.

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.

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

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.

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.

One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.

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

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.

I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. 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.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.