Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

I am all that I grok.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

I never do anything I don’t want to. Nor does anyone, but in my case I know it.

I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people—and parasites.

I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue—indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires...

I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting...But that's not all people laugh at.Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all...

I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because its the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.But find me something that makes you laugh, a joke, anything--but something that...

If I choose to dine with publicans and sinners, that is my business. But I do not choose to break bread with Pharisees.

If I don’t start having service I’m going to swap you all for a dog and shoot the dog.

If it has to be done, a man—a real man—shoots his own dog himself; he doesn’t hire a proxy who may bungle it.

If it has to be done, a man—a real man—shoots his own dog himself; he doesn’t

If tempted by something that feels altruistic, examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!

If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby has to struggle to live you would be happier . . . and much richer. As it is, with some of you, I pity the poverty of your we...

If you load a mud foot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped—say with a stone ax—will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier.

If you’re not too busy this evening, why don’t you bring your soft shoes and your pads over to officers’ row and we’ll go waltzing Matilda? Say about eight o’clock. Yes, sir. That’s not an order, that...

In the course of nearly a century of gusty living he had been broke many times, had several times been wealthier than he now was; he regarded both conditions as he did shifts in the weather, and never...

It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn...

It is not nonsense and nobody asked you; you aren’t competent to have an opinion about it.

It's a shock to have it proved to you that you can't resist seducing yourself.

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.