An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl she used to be. A GREAT artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is, and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be. More than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart. -- Robert Heinlein
This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humouring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply. -- Robert Heinlein (LL)
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled `Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature" : but beavers and their dams are. -- Robert Heinlein
I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats - I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you the figures. -- Robert Heinlein (from The Door Into Summer)
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. -- "John Joseph Bonforte," in Double Star
Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time. -- Robert Heinlein (LL)
Women will forgive anything. Otherwise the race would have died out long ago. -- Robert Heinlein (from Beyond This Horizon; I think Hamilton Felix was the character talking)
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a 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 public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor 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, for their private benefit. -- Robert Heinlein (the judge in Star Beast)
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 Heinlein (from Revolt in 2100)
No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. -- Robert Heinlein (probably LL but I'm not sure)
I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. -- Robert A. Heinlein ("prof" in Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
Look, friends, the only possible way to enjoy life is not to be afraid to die. A zest for living requires a willingness to die; you cannot have the first without the second. The '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s can be loaded with the zest for living, high excitement, and gutsy adventure for any truly human person. "Truly human"? I mean you descendants of cavemen who outlasted the saber-tooth, you who sprang from the loins of the Vikings, you whose ancestors fought the Crusades and were numbered the Golden Horde. Death is the lot of all of us and the only way the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all eternity. -- Robert Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the XIXth World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, 1961
Of course, the Marxian definition of value is ridiculous. All the work one cares to add willl not turn a mud pie into an apple tart; it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare an ordinary sweet. These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value - the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives - and to illustrate the truth of the common-sense defintion as measured in terms of use. -- Robert Heinlein ("Colonel Dubois" in Starship Troopers)
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. -- Robert Heinlein
The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. -- Robert Heinlein (from Beyond This Horizon)
In any sufficiently advanced society, Civil Servant is semantically equivalent to Civil Master. -- R.A. Heinlein (LL)
There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. -- R.A.Heinlein
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity. -- Robert Heinlein
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, Democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort. -- Robert Heinlein
I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth - then to shut up. -- Robert Heinlein (LL, similar sentiments expressed by Maureen in Time Enough for Love)
I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists. -- Robert Heinlein (LL)
A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom . . . and the other twenty percent isn't very important. -- Robert Heinlein
The answer to any question starting, "Why don't they-" is almost always, "Money." -- Robert Heinlein
In a society in which it is a moral offense to be different from your neighbor your only escape is never to let them find out. -- Robert Heinlein
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck." - Robert A Heinlein
All languages carry in them a portrait of their users and the idioms of every language say over and over again, 'He is a stranger and therefore a barbarian.' ... It is the only joke that God ever repeats, because its humor never grows stale. -- Robert A. Heinlein (from Star Beast)
You can lead a man to knowledge, but you cannot make him think. -- Robert Heinlein (Colonel Dubois in Starship Troopers)
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. -- Robert Heinlein
Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine 'that violence never settles anything' I would advise 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. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom. -- Robert Heinlein (Colonel Dubois in Starship Troopers)
One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way -- prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs. – Robert Heinlein
That a free citizen should have to go before a committee, hat in hand, and pray for permission to bear arms - fantastic! Arm your daughter, sir, and pay no attention to petty bureaucrats. -- Robert Heinlein ("Doc" in Red Planet)
A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him. -- Robert Heinlein
The law is whatever you can convince a court it is. – 'Betty Sorenson' in The Star Beast by Robert Heinlein
Mr. Jones, has it ever occurred to you, the world being what it is, that women sometimes prefer not to appear too bright? -- "Ellie," in Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein
