Explore Quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

Self awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.

With eternity to draw on there could be no reason for hurrying - 'hurry' was not a concept in Martian.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny

The death rate is the same for us as for anybody ... one person, one death, sooner or later.

Women will forgive anything. Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago.

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

Are you trying to tell all of us we have a bad signal-to-noise ratio?

A critic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased, he hates all creative people equally.

A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual" - find out how he feels about astrology.

An armed man need not fight.

...I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals... I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose.

Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such [gun control] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

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

Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.

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.

There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.