Robert A. Heinlein Life Quotations

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

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

My old man taught me two things: 'Mind own business' and 'Always cut cards.'

The saddest thing about ephemerals was that their little lives rarely held time enough for love.

Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few.

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

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.

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.

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.