1,085 Quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?

Brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value.

The average bloke . . . hates and fears all freedom, not only for others but for himself, and stamps it out wherever possible.

If you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. and, if you shake him, he bites.

When the citizens of a nation will no longer volunteer to defend it, then it is probably not worth saving. No nation has the right to survive with conscript troops, and in the long run, no nation ever has.

Stupidity is the only natural capital offense.

I'm afraid of coaching, of writer's classes, of writer's magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble - you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step.

Widows are far better than brides. They don't tell, they won't yell, they don't swell, they rarely smell, and they're grateful as hell.

Around the time of the Terran Caesar Augustus, a Martian artist had been composing a work of art. It could have been called a poem, a musical opus, or a philosophical treatise; it was a series of emotions arranged in tragic, logical necessity. Since it could be experienced by a human only in the sense in which a man blind from birth might have a sunset explained to him, it does not matter which category it be assigned.