Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

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.

"Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost! (96)"

"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.

When you’re rich, you don’t have friends; you just have endless acquaintances.

“Jim?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“What’s this about leaving your gun where the baby could reach it?”
Jim flushed. “It wasn’t charged, Dad.”
“If all the people who had been killed with unloaded guns were laid end to end it would make quite a line up. You are proud of being a licensed gun wearer, aren’t you?
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“And I’m proud to have you be one. It means you are a responsible, trusted adult. But when I sponsored you before the Council and stood up with you when you took your oath, I guaranteed that you would obey the regulations and follow the code, wholeheartedly and all the time—not just most of the time. Understand me?”
“Yes, sir. I think I do.”

Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.

“From the ignoramuses we get for recruits I’ve reached the conclusion that this new-fangled ‘functional education’ has abolished studying in favor of developing their cute little personalities.”

"Love" is a that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own...Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy

Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refuses his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that it usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. I had broken the rules; I had fought back.

So-called instincts are instructive, Felix. They point to survival values.

Limiting the freedom of news 'just a little bit' is in the same category with the classic example 'a little bit pregnant.

“It didn’t happen that way,” Roger Stone cut in, “so there is no use talking about other possibilities. They probably aren’t really possibilities at all, if only we understood it.”
Pollux: “Predestination.”
Castor: “Very shaky theory.”
Roger grinned. “I’m not a determinist and you can’t get my goat. I believe in free will.”
Pollux: “Another very shaky theory.”
“Make up your minds,” their father told them. “You can’t have it both ways.”
“Why not?” asked Hazel. “Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.”
“Not mathematical,” objected Pollux.
Castor nodded. “Just poetry.”
“And not very good poetry.”

Hugh shut up. He was thinking glumly that Ponse was not a villain. He was exactly like the members of every ruling class in history: honestly convinced of his benevolence and hurt if it was challenged.

A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.

"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."