Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 - May 8, 1988) Science Fiction Writer

See also: Stranger In A Strange Land, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and Job: A Comedy of Justice

Table of contents

1 Sourced 1.1 Starship Troopers (1959) 1.2 Time Enough For Love (1973) 1.3 The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973) 2 Attributed 3 External links

Sourced

• "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."
  • Logic of Empire (1941)

• “Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often confuses one for the other, or assumes the greater the love, the greater the jealousy. In fact they are almost incompatible; both at once produce unbearable turmoil.”
  • Stranger in a Strange Land (First edition, 1961); this line is not in the "Uncut" edition of 1991 based on his original manuscripts, because this was one of the lines that he actually added, rather than trimmed down, during the editing process of the first edition.

• "There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch."
  • The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) Though some have credited Heinlein with this phrase, because he uses it prominently in this novel, it actually dates to the late 1930's, and even the acronym "TANSTAAFL" is recorded to have been in use as early as 1949.

• "A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright."
  • The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

• "Nothing gives life more zest, than running for your life."
  • The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

• "How can you expect to argue with a woman, who won't?"
  • The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

• "Widows are far better than brides. They don’t tell, they won’t yell, they don’t swell, they rarely smell, and they’re grateful as hell."
  • To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)

• "Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal."
  • Assignment in Eternity

Starship Troopers (1959)

• "There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men."

• "Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst."

• "The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation."

• "That old saw about "to understand all is to forgive all" is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand them, the more you loathe them."

• "Morals -- all correct moral laws -- derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level."

• "Correct morality can only be derived from what man is—not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be."

Time Enough For Love (1973)

• "One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word."

• "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."

• "Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense."

• "Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."

• "It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed 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."

• "Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor."

• "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

• "Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)"

• "The most preposterous notion that H. 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."

• "Does history record any case in which the majority was right?"

• "You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once."

• "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."

• "If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait."

• "History does not record anywhere a religion that has any rational basis. 'Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help.'"

• "Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get."

• "Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors - and miss."

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

Quotations from Heinlein's address at the U.S. Naval Academy April 5, 1973

• "I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape."

• "Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes."

• "The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college —and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child… and it is still moral behavior even when it fails."

• "Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards."

• "The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called 'patriotism.'"

• "Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind."

• "Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on… as long as the women and children are saved. But if you fail to save the women and children, you've had it, you're done, you're through! You join Tyrannosaurus Rex, one more breed that bilged its final test."

• "'Patriotism' is a way of saying "Women and children first." And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely."

Attributed

• "A generation without history has no past— and no future."

• "Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."

• "Natural laws have no pity."

• "There is solemn satisfaction in doing the best you can for eight billion people. Perhaps their lives have no cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt."
  • Double Star

"An armed society is a polite society"

"Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events."

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surely curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort."

• "Beauty is not diminished by being shared."

• "In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is never to let them find out."

• "If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait."

• "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."

• "Being right too soon is socially unacceptable."

• "History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- i.e., none to speak of."

• "Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do."

• "To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy -- and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."

• "Yield to temptation -- it may not pass your way again."

• "Belief gets in the way of learning."

• "Learning isn't a means to an end; it is an end in itself."

• "No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. He simply follows the eleventh commandment."

• "History does not record anywhere a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure" from fiddling with it."

• "Death is the lot of all of us and the only way the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt."

• "Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do."

• "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

• "Rules serve best when broken."

• "Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor."

• "I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him."

• "The plural of spouse is spice."

• "Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks!"

• "Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft."
  • Red Planet

• "The meek shall inherit the earth, a 6 foot plot above them."

• "But I will accept and 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 and morally responsible for everything I do."

• "Goodness without wisdom always accomplished evil."

• "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
  • Life Line, 1939

External links

• The Heinlein Society
• Robert A. Heinlein, Grandmaster of Science Fiction
• Internet Book Database of Fiction bibliography
• Good bibliography, essays, news, links, etc.
• Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award
• Stealth Press announces new publishing venture
• Robert & Virginia Heinlein Prize