Robert A. Heinlein (1907–88,) fully Robert Anson Heinlein, was an American science fiction writer, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. He was among the earliest to feature scientific accuracy in his fiction, and he is considered one of the most literary and sophisticated science-fiction writers.
Born in Butler, Missouri, Heinlein graduated from U.S. Naval Academy in 1929 and serving in the navy for five years. He studied physics and mathematics at the University of California-Los Angeles and then began writing science fiction in 1939. He served in the navy during World War II and resumed writing after the war.
Heinlein called his work “speculative fiction” because he tried to write about events that could happen, considering everything known about the universe’s natural laws. Heinlein wrote more than 50 novels and collections of short stories over four decades. He is best known for his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961,) a cult classic about a boy born during the first human-crewed mission to Mars. He is raised by Martians, then returns to Earth, starts a church, and preaches free love.
Heinlein’s other popular books include The Green Hills of Earth (1951,) Double Star (1956,) The Door into Summer (1957,) Citizen of the Galaxy (1957,) and Methuselah’s Children (1958.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Robert A. Heinlein
The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Universe, The Universe
Belief gets in the way of learning.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Belief
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Men & Women, Cats, Fun
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.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Possibilities, Vision, Authority
Since when was an emotional argument won by logic
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Arguments, One liners
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Living
Those who cling to the untrue doctrine that violence never settles anything would be advised to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Violence
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Freedom, Responsibility
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: One liners, Selfishness
Moving parts in contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often, the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as empty, meaningless, or dishonest, and scorn to use them. No matter how pure their motives, they thereby throw sand into the machinery that does not work too well at best.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Politeness
Sin lies in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Integrity
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.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it’s supposed to do
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Worry
The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in it.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: World
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Children
Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn’t often, on their own, the hard way.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Experience
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.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Oppression
Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy—in fact, they’re almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Both at once can produce unbearable turmoil…
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Jealousy
Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Youth
Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Progress
The more you love, the more you can love – and the more intensely you love? Nor is there any limit on how many you can love? If a person had time enough, he could love all that majority who are decent and just.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Love
Gratitude: An imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behavior, altruism. Both imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Gratitude
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Manners
The stars incline, but do not impel.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Always listen to the experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Experts, Professionalism, Advice, General
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Cats
Never make your appeal to a man’s better nature; he may not have one. Always make your appeal to his self-interest.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Better, Rest, Nature
I’ve never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith – it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Faith
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Happiness, Love
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Money
Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion—in the long run, these are the only people who count.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Thought
The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Censorship
No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Universe, The Universe
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Confidence, Jealousy, Self Confidence
A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Sin
To get anywhere, or even live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Chance
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn of falsehoods.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Learning
Being intelligent is not a felony, but most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Thinking
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Atheism
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