Robert A. Heinlein

My folks tried to make a preacher of me and missed by a narrow margin… I would have made a good one if I hadn’t fallen into the fatal folly of reading anything I could lay hands on. With just a touch more self confidence and a liberal helping of ignorance I could have been a famous evangelist.

Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.

Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their own, the hard way.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny

Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.

There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into-that's the way we're built and I assume that there's some reason for that.

No storyteller has been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.

A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the lord in vain- then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?

Never try to have the last word. You might get it.

The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.

Belief gets in the way of learning.

First you must learn to control your self. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes.

To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.

Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.

The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same.

Was there ever a time when the majority was right?

When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.

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

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.