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 supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
—Robert A. Heinlein
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.
—Robert A. Heinlein
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
Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. Another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible result. Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Happiness
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Learning
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn of falsehoods.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Learning
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 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
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
—Robert A. Heinlein
I don’t see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Perspective
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
Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Wisdom
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
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Happiness, Love
History does not record anywhere or at any time 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.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Religion
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