Robert A. Heinlein

“Abstract design is all right—for wallpaper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity or terror, which is not abstract at all but very human.”

“I want to spit back at a camel and ask him what he's so sour about. Maybe camels are the real 'Old Ones' on this planet ... and that what is wrong with the place.”

“That’s a subject as safe as being in favor of Christmas.”

“Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must WriteRule Two: Finish What Your StartRule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial OrderRule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the MarketRule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold”

“I never learned from a man who agreed with me.”

“If I don’t start having service I’m going to swap you all for a dog and shoot the dog.”

“When it don’t rain, the roof don’t leak; when it rains, I can’t fix it nohow.”

“It comes from exercising care in the choice of parents.”

“I was just pulling your leg and it came off in my hand.”

“My only regret involved the sad knowledge that I could not handle the amount of alcohol I would have enjoyed. “Easy is the descent into Hell.”

“I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.”

“Hit it! You have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who’s boss.”

“A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it—it keeps him upright.”

“I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.”

“Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation. . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These ladies who won't deign to do that- and perhaps can't- of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved- if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such.""You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why i didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues- but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness.""Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general terms it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't 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. Ben, would you call me an artists?”“Huh? Well, I’ve never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick.”“Thank you. ‘Artist’ is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called ‘Doctor.’ But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once… and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer… reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror… or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for ‘technique’ or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I’ve reached him- or I don’t want anything. Support for the arts- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind.”

“Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled.”

“Morals — all correct moral laws — derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.”

“Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit”

“Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?”

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.”

“Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid.)”

“Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.”

“Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code — family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than the failure to abide by the code.”

“I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.”

“He became convinced that ordinary commercial financing could be done for a service charge plus an insurance fee amounting to much less that the current rates of interest charged by banks, whose rates were based on supply and demand, treating money as a commodity rather than as a sovereign state's means of exchange.”

“You were probably educated in the conventional economic theories of your period which were magnificent and most ingenious, but--if you will pardon my saying so--all wrong.”

“...the word 'love' designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.”

“God made alcohol and he made feet - and he made 'em so you could put 'em together and be happy!”

“With just a touch more self confidence and a liberal helping of ignorance I could have been a famous evangelist.”

“Audacity, always audacity - soundest principal of strategy.”

“A little more money won't do you any good - because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation, regardless of the amount.”

“To support his austerely upholstered nest and its rabble staff he put forth minimum effort for maximum return simply because it was easier to be rich than to be poor - Harshaw merely wished to live exactly as he liked, doing whatever he thought was best for him.”

“A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame… as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world…aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.[...]“My point is that one person is responsible. Always. [...] In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.”

“But, do you know, once you get used to it's rather cute. I mean, if a girl looks alright to start with, she still looks alright with her head smooth.”

“...though weather is important while it happens it seems to me to be pretty dull to look back on. You can take descriptions of most any sort of weather out of an almanac and stick them in just anywhere; they'll probably fit.”

“You got the impression that he never needed to sleep - just ten-thousand-mile checkups and dust him off occasionally.”

“...a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man.”

“You have to have been out on a long patrol to appreciate this properly. You need to have looked forward to your day of guard duty, for the privilege of standing two hours out of each six with your spine against bulkhead thirty and your ears cocked for just the sound of a female voice. I suppose it's actually easier in the all-stag ships... but I'll take the Rodger Young. It's good to know that the ultimate reason you are fighting actually exists and that they are not just a figment of the imagination.”

“Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.”

“Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.”

“It's a long story. Want a refill?""No, let's start the steak. Where's the button?""Right here.""Well, push it.""Me? You offered to cook.""Ben Caxton, I will lie here and starve before I will get up to push a button six inches from your finger""As you wish." He pressed the button. "But don't forget who cooked dinner.”

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

“Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!”

“Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.”

“There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured.”

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

“Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.”

“Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.”

“I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.”

“The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.”