Robert A. Heinlein Quotes - Page 2

The Universe was a damned silly place at best . . . but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings "just happened" to be some atoms that "just happened" to get together in configurations which "just happened" to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations "just happened" to possess self-awareness and that two such "just happened" to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside. No, Jubal would not buy the "just happened" theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. 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.
Robert A. Heinlein
Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse---and without examining evidence which their “common sense” told them was impossible.
Robert A. Heinlein
Random chance is not sufficient to explain random chance. ~Jubal Harshaw
Robert A. Heinlein
I waited. Women talk when they want to. Or don't.
Robert A. Heinlein
I'm too much old-timer to be rude to a woman no matter what - they have so much of what we have none of.
Robert A. Heinlein
The way to find justice is to deal fairly with other people and not worry about how they deal with you.
Robert A. Heinlein
Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.
Robert A. Heinlein
Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure “good” government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare — most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the “backseat driver” syndrome.
Robert A. Heinlein
Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
Robert A. Heinlein
Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.
Robert A. Heinlein
The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can "prove" anything from it.
Robert A. Heinlein
Good!” the creature echoed. “Doctor Nelson will be along in a minute. Feel like breakfast?”All symbols were in Smith’s vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard rightly. He knew that he was food, but he did not “feel like” food. Nor had he any warning that he might be selected for such honor.
Robert A. Heinlein
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.
Robert A. Heinlein
Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.
Robert A. Heinlein
Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring.
Robert A. Heinlein
Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is.
Robert A. Heinlein
You. What is the moral difference, ifany, between the soldier and the civilian?""The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civicvirtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the bodypolitic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life.The civilian does not.
Robert A. Heinlein
The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive--and nowhere else!--and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.
Robert A. Heinlein
Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.
Robert A. Heinlein
But how, from the viewpoint of a Martian, did man differ from other animals? Would a race that could levitate and god knows what else be impressed by engineering? If so would the Aswan Dam or a thousand miles of coral reef win first prize? Man's self awareness, sheer conceit. There was no way to prove that sperm whales and sequoias were not philosophers and poets exceeding any human merit?
Robert A. Heinlein
…the greatest danger to man in space was man himself.
Robert A. Heinlein
English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.
Robert A. Heinlein
Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.
Robert A. Heinlein
He never once repeated himself and he never used either profanity or obscenity. (I learned later that he saved those for very special occasions, which this wasn’t.) But he described our shortcomings, physical, mental, moral, and genetic, in great and insulting detail.But somehow I was not insulted; I became greatly interested in studying his command of language. I wished that we had had him on our debate team.
Robert A. Heinlein
I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones - by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether universe or a smaller one.
Robert A. Heinlein
Oh, "Tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't,' I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, 'or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless.
Robert A. Heinlein
Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.
Robert A. Heinlein
Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.
Robert A. Heinlein
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!
Robert A. Heinlein
In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality.
Robert A. Heinlein
Do you know your Bible?''Uh, not very well.''It merits study, it contains very practical advice for most emergencies.
Robert A. Heinlein
I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest.
Robert A. Heinlein
If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people. -- Lazarus Long.
Robert A. Heinlein
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!
Robert A. Heinlein
One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
Robert A. Heinlein
Science fiction" means different things to different people. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra"—in which case the term science fiction has piled up a lot of expensive overtime.
Robert A. Heinlein
Belief gets in the way of learning.
Robert A. Heinlein
Oh, you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay attention if it's free.
Robert A. Heinlein
The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge . . . and stronger.
Robert A. Heinlein
Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them. From an anthropologist's view, 'justice' is a search for workable customs.
Robert A. Heinlein
Customs, morals--is there a difference?
Robert A. Heinlein
Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it.
Robert A. Heinlein
A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
Robert A. Heinlein
A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.
Robert A. Heinlein
I'm not feisty. But when you're as small as I am and female if you don't stand up for your rights, you're sure to be pushed around by big, hairy, smelly men with delusions about male superiority.
Robert A. Heinlein
Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Robert A. Heinlein
Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.
Robert A. Heinlein
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.
Robert A. Heinlein
I don't see why human people make such a heavy trip out of sex. It isn't anything complex, it is simply the best thing in life, even better than food.
Robert A. Heinlein
Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.
Robert A. Heinlein
Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That’s a law of nature, to be known henceforth as ‘Harshaw’s Law.
Robert A. Heinlein
He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an insurance fee amounting to much less that the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state's means of exchange.
Robert A. Heinlein
Marrying Gretchen is a good idea, darling; I would enjoy bringing her up. Teaching her to shoot, helping her with her first baby, coaching her in how to handle a knife, working out with her in martial arts, all the homey domestic skills a girl needs in this modern world.
Robert A. Heinlein
A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.
Robert A. Heinlein
I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.
Robert A. Heinlein
Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.
Robert A. Heinlein
It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has.
Robert A. Heinlein
I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue?
Robert A. Heinlein
A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.
Robert A. Heinlein
The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
Robert A. Heinlein