Robert A. Heinlein (1907 – 1988)
One of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of science fiction of the 20th Century.
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy.
I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it’s better to laugh than cry.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. p.248
Women seem to have almost unlimited capacity for forgiveness. (Since it is usually a man who needs forgiveness, this must be a racial survival trait.)
(E)ach generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup -- if any.
No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other — but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.
Fighting continued on a token basis, and the dead did not complain.
My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.
When you’re rich, you don’t have friends; you just have endless acquaintances.
All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts: those who know this and those who do not.
How can you argue with a woman who won't?
You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.
Nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers.
You're in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish.
We lived like that “Happy Family“ you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently.
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
A man who marries at my age isn’t taking a wife, he’s indenturing a nurse.