Robert A. Heinlein Giving Quotations

Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She's a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more pay check. She's a twelve-year-old trying to mother her brothers and sisters because mama had to go to Heaven. She's a switchboard operator sticking to her post while smoke chokes her and fire cuts off her escape. She's all the unsung heroes who couldn't make it but never quit.

Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime - and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows.

You obviously don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. It is not a fat purse and time to spend it. Its owner finds himself beset on every side, at every hour, wherever he goes, by persistent pleaders, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious of honest friendship--indeed honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could have been his friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.

The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.

Age does not bring wisdom... but it does give perspective... and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted.

Never appeal to a man's 'better nature.' He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.

You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets fretful. After he pees in it, he likes the flavor better, so he buys it.

I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists.

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

Nothing gives life more zest that running for your life.