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: The Universe, Universe
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
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
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Children
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
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
One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Engineering
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 statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Authority, Control
Most people who sneer at technology would starve to death if the engineering infrastructure were removed.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Technology
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Freedom, Responsibility
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
Women will forgive anything.
Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Forgiveness
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
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
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
Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Wisdom
Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Youth
The stars incline, but do not impel.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Being intelligent is not a felony, but most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Thinking
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
Learning isn’t a means to an end; it is an end in itself.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Learning
May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Living
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
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
No matter where or what, there are makers, takers, and fakers.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: People
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: Authority, Vision, Possibilities
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 greatest productive force is human selfishness.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Selfishness, One liners
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Love, Happiness
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Cats
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Self Confidence, Jealousy, Confidence
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
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
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
—Robert A. Heinlein
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Money
If it can’t be expressed in figures, it’s not science it’s opinion.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Science, Opinion, Scientists
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual” – find out how he feels about astrology.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Sex
I don’t see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.
—Robert A. Heinlein
Topics: Perspective
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