Robert A. Heinlein
From Wikiquote Jump to: navigation, search A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future. Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.Robert Anson Heinlein (7 July 1907 – 8 May 1988) was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of science fiction of the 20th Century.
See also pages for the novels:
- Starship Troopers (1959)
- Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
- Glory Road (1963)
- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
- Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)
Sourced
One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits ...- How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?
- "Doctor Pinero" in Life-Line (1939)
- One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.
- "Doctor Pinero" in Life-Line (1939)
- 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)
- You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
- Logic of Empire (1941); this is one of the earliest known variants of an idea which has become known as Hanlon's razor.
- An armed society is a polite society.
- Beyond This Horizon (1942)
- The door dilated.
- This offhand mention has become the simplest (three words!) and often-quoted exposition of the wonders of a different world, where what would be novel today has become simply the way things work. Beyond This Horizon (1942)
- The whole principle is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak.
- On censorship, in The Man Who Sold the Moon (1949), p.188
- Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.
- Red Planet (1949)
- Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
- Waldo & Magic, Inc. (1950)
- Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.
- Assignment in Eternity (1953)
- Take sex away from people. Make it forbidden, evil. Limit it to ritualistic breeding. Force it to back up into suppressed sadism. Then hand the people a scapegoat to hate. Let them kill a scapegoat occasionally for cathartic release. The mechanism is ages old. Tyrants used it centuries before the word "psychology" was ever invented. It works, too.
- Revolt in 2100 (1953)
- The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.
- Revolt in 2100 (1953), postscript
- The death rate is the same for us as for anybody ... one person, one death, sooner or later.
- Tunnel in the Sky (1955), Captain Helen Walker, Ch. 2
- If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.
- The Door into Summer (1957), chapter 1
- We lived like that "Happy Family" you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently.
- I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say : Let the damned thing go down the drain!
- Guest of Honor Speech at the 29th World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, Washington (1961)
- The Quotable Heinlein
- I started clipping and filing by categories on trends as early as 1930 and my "youngest" file was started in 1945.
Span of time is important; the 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.
- "The Happy Days Ahead" in Expanded Universe (1980)
- 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)
- How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.
- To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
- I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces — with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything, now.
- The Robert Heinlein Interview, and other Heinleiniana (1990) by J. Neil Schulman
- My wife Ticky is an anarchist-individualist ... When she was in the Navy during the early 'forties she showed up one morning in proper uniform but with her red hair held down by a simple navy-blue band — a hair ribbon. It was neat (Ticky is always neat) and it suited the rest of her outfit esthetically, but it was undeniably a hair ribbon and her division officer had fits.
"If you can show me," Ticky answered with simple dignity, "where it says one word in the Navy Uniform Regulations on the subject of hair ribbons, I'll take it off. Otherwise not."
See what I mean? She doesn't have the right attitude.
- Tramp Royale (1992)
If This Goes On (1940)
- When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
The Puppet Masters (1951)
- Listen, son. Most women are damn fools and children. But they've got more range than we've got. The brave ones are braver, the good ones are better — and the vile ones are viler, for that matter.
- The "Old Man" to "Sam", when discussing "Mary", chapter 11
- Don't ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough girls and boys to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I've read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don't know; it sounds Utopian.
- chapter 24
The Rolling Stones (1952)
One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.- Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
- Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.
Double Star (1956)
- Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.
- I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I had sampled them — public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash — but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law’s kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything. I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to most children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a “good” child is one who does not disturb mother’s nap and a “good” man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks!
- Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong — but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.
- His bow to me must have been calculated on a slide rule; it suggested that I was about to be Supreme Minister but was not quite there yet, that I was his senior but nevertheless a civilian — then subtract five degrees for the fact that he wore the Emperor’s aiguillette on his right shoulder.
- Son, suppose you tend to your knitting and I tend to mine.
- People don’t really want change, any change at all — and xenophobia is very deep-rooted. But we progress, as we must — if we are to go out to the stars.
- 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.
Methuselah's Children (1958)
- Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.
- No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other — but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.
- A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.
- Life is short, but the years are long.
- Part of the secret "call and response" codewords by which members of the long-lived Howard Families can identify others:
-
- Life is short. But the years are long. Not while the evil days come not.
Starship Troopers (1959)
- These are just a few samples; for more quotes from this work, see Starship Troopers.
- 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.
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Re: Multiple account suggestions. Macrium Reflect v4.2 - Hard Disk Imaging and File Backup Software is another good program for your purposes. Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. ~ . Robert A. Heinlein. ~ ...
Robert Heinlein Problem?
Q. I am meant to be doing a little research on Robert Heinlein, however my local library has NONE of his books! I find this hard to believe, however I've looked at two so far, as well as my school library. My teacher wasn't sure who he was, and told me just to try and find information about him from anywhere, and as I can't find any information else where, I'm resorting to ask the good people of Y!A to assist. I'm not asking you to do the report, just to give me a few ideas since I can't use the texts myself. Please star if you come across this question, even if you can't help, in the hope that someone who sees it will. Thank you! I have to apply the work of Robert Heinlein to these headings, basically, which have been taken from the subject's [cont.]
Asked by unknown - Sun May 3 08:24:49 2009 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments
A. Your local library is missing one of the giants of science fiction, then. But they probably offer interlibrary loans for free or at minimal cost, under a buck. Pick a few titles and request them. While "Stranger in a Strange Land" is probably his best known work, it's not among my favorites. I like his short story collections, like "The Green Hills of Earth." I also liked "Farnham's Freehold," in which white families become slaves of black overlords, "Starship Troopers," and "Time Enough for Love," in which people bred for longevity have the inevitable problems with outliving everyone they ever loved.
Answered by akaMaryn - Sun May 3 08:50:23 2009
Q. I am meant to be doing a little research on Robert Heinlein, however my local library has NONE of his books! I find this hard to believe, however I've looked at two so far, as well as my school library. My teacher wasn't sure who he was, and told me just to try and find information about him from anywhere, and as I can't find any information else where, I'm resorting to ask the good people of Y!A to assist. I'm not asking you to do the report, just to give me a few ideas since I can't use the texts myself. Please star if you come across this question, even if you can't help, in the hope that someone who sees it will. Thank you! I have to apply the work of Robert Heinlein to these headings, basically, which have been taken from the subject's [cont.]
Asked by unknown - Sun May 3 08:24:49 2009 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments
A. Your local library is missing one of the giants of science fiction, then. But they probably offer interlibrary loans for free or at minimal cost, under a buck. Pick a few titles and request them. While "Stranger in a Strange Land" is probably his best known work, it's not among my favorites. I like his short story collections, like "The Green Hills of Earth." I also liked "Farnham's Freehold," in which white families become slaves of black overlords, "Starship Troopers," and "Time Enough for Love," in which people bred for longevity have the inevitable problems with outliving everyone they ever loved.
Answered by akaMaryn - Sun May 3 08:50:23 2009
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