The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Robert A. Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein

It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

deception, half-truths, lies, lying, omissions, truth

Robert A. Heinlein

Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.

moms, mother, motherhood, mothering, parenting

Robert A. Heinlein

Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in ‘measurements’ when he did not know what he was measuring.

arrogance, humility, ignorance, limitations

Robert A. Heinlein

Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is.

human, land, love, natural, ownership, people, property, slaves

Robert A. Heinlein

You. What is the moral difference, ifany, between the soldier and the civilian?””The difference,” I answered carefully, “lies in the field of civicvirtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the bodypolitic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life.The civilian does not.

ethics, military, morality

Robert A. Heinlein

The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it. Anything that conflicts with the survival instinct acts sooner or later to eliminate the individual and thereby fails to show up in future generations. . . . A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual’s instinct to survive–and nowhere else!–and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.We have such a theory now; we can solve any moral problem, on any level. Self-interest, love of family, duty to country, responsibility toward the human race . . . .The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual.

human-nature, moral, morality, survival, survival-instinct

Robert A. Heinlein

Thinking doesn’t pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.

Robert A. Heinlein

But how, from the viewpoint of a Martian, did man differ from other animals? Would a race that could levitate and god knows what else be impressed by engineering? If so would the Aswan Dam or a thousand miles of coral reef win first prize? Man’s self awareness, sheer conceit. There was no way to prove that sperm whales and sequoias were not philosophers and poets exceeding any human merit?

Robert A. Heinlein

…the greatest danger to man in space was man himself.

Robert A. Heinlein

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.

english-language, feelings

Robert A. Heinlein

Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named…but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

cultural-decay, culture, manners, politeness

Robert A. Heinlein

He never once repeated himself and he never used either profanity or obscenity. (I learned later that he saved those for very special occasions, which this wasn’t.) But he described our shortcomings, physical, mental, moral, and genetic, in great and insulting detail.But somehow I was not insulted; I became greatly interested in studying his command of language. I wished that we had had him on our debate team.

expletives, insults, language, profanity