Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Robert A. Heinlein (American Science Fiction Writer)

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

Never try to outstubborn a cat.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Cats

Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Technology

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

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Love, Happiness

Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Learning

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

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn of falsehoods.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Learning

Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Wisdom

The human race divides itself politically into those who want to be controlled, and those who have no such desire
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Welfare

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
Robert A. Heinlein

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Responsibility, Freedom

Being intelligent is not a felony, but most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Thinking

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

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it’s supposed to do
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Worry

One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Engineering

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

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

Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Youth

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

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

If it can’t be expressed in figures, it’s not science it’s opinion.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Science, Scientists, Opinion

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

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Living

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
Robert A. Heinlein

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 stars incline, but do not impel.
Robert A. Heinlein

No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers.
Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: People

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: The Universe, Universe

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

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

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