Quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

“How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”

“For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.”

“If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”

“Beds do not matter, it is who is in a bed that counts.”

“Since when was an emotional argument won by logic?”

“People usually believe anything that they are told early and often.”

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

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 are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.

May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. 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 that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply 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...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesnt matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.

Some people insist that mediocre is better than best. They delight in clipping wings because they themselves cant fly. They despise brains because they have none.

Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector...and miss.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

Dont explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.

If youve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesnt prove it.

Women talk when they want to. Or dont.

If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as worship.