Quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

A desire not to butt into other peoples business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.

Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

Başkalarının işine burnunu sokmamak insanın sahip olabileceği bilgeliğin yüzde seksenidir... kalan yüzde yirmi de pek önemli değildir zaten.

Bir kaplanın sırtında yolculuk etmenin en önemli kuralı, kulaklarını asla bırakmamaktır.

The worst that can possibly have happened to him is death and that we are all in for---if not this morning, then in days, or weeks, or years at most.

Death isnt funny. Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.

There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?

Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness.

Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Its up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers dont 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.

Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

One mans theology is another mans belly laugh.

Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

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 cant or wont entertain.

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.

The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.