Home > Author > Robert A. Heinlein
21 " Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness. "
― Robert A. Heinlein , Stranger in a Strange Land
22 " Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along. "
23 " Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. "
― Robert A. Heinlein
24 " It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. "
25 " Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so. "
26 " One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. "
― Robert A. Heinlein , Time Enough for Love
27 " Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution. "
28 " No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own . . . and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing . . . is one that they can't or won't entertain. "
29 " People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox. "
30 " The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together. "
31 " But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees. "
32 " The Mother Thing makes our world. "
― Robert A. Heinlein , Have Space Suit—Will Travel
33 " More depended on the student than on the school. "
34 " When you read about chemistry and physics, you want to do them too. "
35 " Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.] "
36 " Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers. "
37 " You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once. "
38 " Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor. "
― Robert A. Heinlein , Starship Troopers
39 " Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn't care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance; however the trouble with 'lessons from history' is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins. "
40 " 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. "