There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that’s philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that’s science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy’s Law, sometimes offset.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

I really really really hate this,” Pat told him. “Exactly our problem. Hate does not add clarity.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Hilda my love, for a scouting expedition the situation becomes equivalent to a craft in motion. Again we require a captain.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Gramp had a heavy hand. ‘Never take anybody’s word about whether a gun is loaded.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader – the barbarians enter Rome.

— Robert A. Heinlein

What’s that got to do with it? Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.

— Robert A. Heinlein

A multimillionaire who is young and female stands as much chance of getting a good husband as that well-known tissue-paper dog had of chasing that asbestos cat through Hell.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Hit anything hard enough, strike sparks. Elementary physics, known to everybody but intelligentsia.

— Robert A. Heinlein

While any Fair Witness would do, the prestige of Cavendish was such that a lawyer was hardly necessary – the old gentleman had testified many times before the High Court and it was said that the wills locked up in his head represented billions. Cavendish had received his training in total recall from the great Dr. Samuel Renshaw and his hypnotic instruction as a fellow of the Rhine Foundation.

— Robert A. Heinlein

The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand – that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their ’rights.

— Robert A. Heinlein

But don’t worry; almost no one in this ship speaks System English and she isn’t one of the few. They talk their ‘secret language’ – only it isn’t secret; it’s just Finnish.

— Robert A. Heinlein

They’re not cruel; they’re just pig-headed and provincial. The fact that you have feelings never occurs to them.

— Robert A. Heinlein

In the fifteenth century the Pope.

— Robert A. Heinlein

His expression was innocent, his eyes were not. What sort of creature had a face like that?

— Robert A. Heinlein

We citizens of Luna are jailbirds and descendants of jailbirds. But Luna herself is a stern schoolmistress; those who have lived through her harsh lessons have no cause to feel ashamed.

— Robert A. Heinlein

A tramp is a bum, a parasite, a man that won’t work. A hobo is an itinerant laborer who prefers casual freedom to security. He works for his living, but he won’t be tied down to one environment.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Look, Star, I’m not going to believe the impossible simply because I was there.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Her face lit up. “What’s wrong with this little stand of trees?” “Mmm. Yes. Now.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Is mixed-up place another way; they care about skin color – by making point of how they don’t care.

— Robert A. Heinlein

Prof, as I see, are no circumstances under which State is justified in placing its welfare ahead of mine.

— Robert A. Heinlein

But you don’t seem to want any rules!” “True. But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

— Robert A. Heinlein
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