Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Rotation through a fourth dimension can’t affect a three-dimensional figure any more than you can shake letters off a printed page.

I used to wonder what it was like to be rich. Now I am and it turns out to be mostly headaches.

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

The trouble with conspiracies is that they rot internally.

My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity . . . and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases myself.

Oh, we get along. She lets me have my own way, and later I find out I’ve done just what she wanted me to do.

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.

“What can I do for you?”
“Uh, is this confidential?”
“Privileged, son. The word is ‘privileged.’ You don’t ask a lawyer that; he’s either honest or he ain’t. Me, I’m middlin’ honest. You take your chances.”

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.

“People tend to fall into three psychological types, all differently motivated. There is the type, motivated by economic factors, money...And there is the type motivated by ‘face,’ or pride. This type is a spender, fighter, boaster, lover, sportsman, gambler; he has a will to power and an itch for glory. And there is the professional type, which claims to follow a code of ethics rather than simply seeking money or glory—priests and ministers, teachers, scientists, medical men, some artists and writers. The idea is that such a man believes that he is devoting his life to some purpose more important than his individual self. You follow me?”

“You put me in mind of a case I ran into in the American West. A respected citizen shot a professional gunthrower in the back. When asked why he didn’t give the other chap a chance to draw, the survivor said, ‘Well, he’s dead and I’m alive and that’s how I wanted it to be.’ Jamie, if you use sportsmanship on a known scamp, you put yourself at a terrible disadvantage.”

Marriages are arranged in heaven but the bills must be paid here on earth.

...I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write...

...writing is antisocial. It's as solitary as masturbation. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone... and not even know that he's doing it. As writers' wives and husbands often learn to their horror...

...there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, 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. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all... and, if you shake him at this stage, he bites...

Protocol is either useful or it should be abolished.

Doc says the Company set-up is just one big happy family, and the idea that it is a non-profit corporation is the biggest joke since women were invented.