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Robert A. Heinlein Quotes - Page 21

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Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.

Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.

Robert A. Heinlein
Long, Patterns, Easy

Analogy is even slipperier than logic.

Robert A. Heinlein
Analogies, Logic
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN (1961). “STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND”

To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.

Robert A. Heinlein
Real, History, World
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.324, Penguin

Nobody has ever seen an electron. Nor a thought. You can't see a thought, you can't measure, weigh, nor taste it- but thoughts are the most real things in the Galaxy.

Robert A. Heinlein
Real, Taste, Electrons
Robert A. Heinlein (2005). “Citizen of the Galaxy”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly.

Robert A. Heinlein
Moving, Insects
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.323, Penguin

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.

Robert A. Heinlein
Art, Philosophical, Sunset
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.93, Penguin

Magic is not science, it is a collection of ways to do things ways that work but often we don't know why.

Robert A. Heinlein
Magic, Way, Collections
Robert A. Heinlein (1982). “Glory Road”, Berkley

One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast.

Robert A. Heinlein
Funny Food, Breakfast, End Of The World

It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can't be enforced weakens all other laws.

Robert A. Heinlein
Law, Seems
Robert A. Heinlein (1982). “Friday”

In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality.

Robert A. Heinlein
Breakfast, Evaluation, Chance

Faith is intellectual laziness.

Robert A. Heinlein
Intellectual, Intellectual Laziness, Laziness

Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor.

Robert A. Heinlein
People, Sense Of Humor, Honest

The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

Robert A. Heinlein
Science, Vices, Vice Versa
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.231, Penguin

Most 'scientists' are bottle washers and button sorters.

Robert A. Heinlein
Buttons, Bottles, Scientist
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.222, Penguin

I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.

Robert A. Heinlein
Life, Hurt, Laughing
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.295, Penguin

Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.

Robert A. Heinlein
Love, Romantic, Enough
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.201, Penguin

There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself.

Robert A. Heinlein
Men, Unbearable, Nuisance
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.138, Penguin

The future is better than the past. Despite the crepe hangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands ... with tools ... with horse sense and science and engineering.

Robert A. Heinlein
Horse, Past, Engineering

Secrecy begets tyranny.

Robert A. Heinlein
Political, Secrecy, Tyranny
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.32, Penguin

Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it - especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken. Negative proof is usually impossible.

Robert A. Heinlein
Faith, Intellectual, Negative
"Stranger in a Strange Land " by Robert A. Heinlein, (p. 233), 1991.

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another - but which one? Differences are crucial.

Robert A. Heinlein
Running, Horse, Differences
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.222, Penguin

But I contend that the disgusting behavior of many of their alleged 'holy men' relieves us of any intellectual obligation to take the stuff seriously. No amount of sanctimonious rationalization can make such behavior anything but pathological.

Robert A. Heinlein
Men, Intellectual, Religion

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

Robert A. Heinlein
Men, Together, Illogical
Robert A. Heinlein (2005). “Citizen of the Galaxy”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

Pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival.

Robert A. Heinlein
Pain, Years, Survival
Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.93, Penguin

Churches thrive on martyrdom and persecution.

Robert A. Heinlein
Church, Thrive, Persecution
Robert A. Heinlein (1983). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, Berkley

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