Robert A. Heinlein Men Quotations

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

One man's 'magic' is another man's engineering. 'Supernatural' is a null word.

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.

Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

But I contend that the disgusting behavior of many of their alleged 'holy men' relieves us of any intellectual obligation to take the stuff seriously. No amount of sanctimonious rationalization can make such behavior anything but pathological.

Cast me into a dungeon;, burn me at the state, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives -- but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.

Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.

The brown monkey's instinct to kill is correct; such men are dangerous to all monkey customs.

Specialization is for insects... The race of man? He's a whole other creature.

If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called 'behaviorist psychology.'

Yes, Boss?' Dorcas, the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, no-good parasite.' She yawned again. 'Everybody knows that.' Nevermind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to stop being sensible--a time to stand up and be counted--strike a blow for liberty--smite the wicked.' Ummm...' So quit yawning, the time has come.' She glanced down. 'Maybe I had better get dressed.

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

Some logics get nervous breakdowns. Overloaded phone system behaves like frightened child. Mike did not have upsets, acquired sense of humor instead. Low one. If he were a man, you wouldn't dare stoop over. His idea of thigh-slapper would be to dump you out of bed — or put itch powder in pressure suit.

An armed man need not fight.

Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.

By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man -- man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him.

If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.

Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too.

Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated.

Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you.

All human behavior, all human motivations, all man’s hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind’s tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.

Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost! (96)

There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service.

I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter.

Men are not potatoes!

The Universe was a silly place at best...but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings 'just happened' to be atoms that 'just happened' to get together in ways which 'just happened' to look like consistent laws and some configurations 'just happened' to possess self-awareness and that two 'just happened' to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.

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

In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.

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

Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That’s a law of nature, to be known henceforth as ‘Harshaw’s Law.

...more than six people cannot agree on anything, three is better and one is perfect for a job that one can do. This is why parliamentary bodies all through history, when they accomplished anything, owed it to a few strong men who dominated the rest.

A "critic" is a man who creates nothing ...

It is impossible for a man to love his wife whole heartedly without loving all women somewhat. I suppose that the converse must be true of women.

All men are created unequal.

Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is - so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.

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.

There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself.

Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time.

To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.

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

I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.

How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over what we can say and can't say and what we can show and what we can't show - it's enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, "equality" is a disaster.

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

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.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.

Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. [He is also a fool.]

Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together.

Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.

Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.

Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay; and claims a halo for his dishonesty.

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!

Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.

Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong - but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong.

Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

It's a man's business to be what he is, and to be it in style.

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.

Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact.

Never encourage a man to cook breakfast; it cause him to wonder if women are necessary.

No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law.

Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them.

I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute not common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

My old man says when it's time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.

Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature--a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.

Money is the sincerest of all flattery. Women love to be flattered. So do men.

You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

If you do not believe that a man will commit murder for one can of tomatoes, then you have never been hungry.

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

Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything - you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.

A critic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased, he hates all creative people equally.

Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.

God created men to test the souls of women.

Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.

Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.

My old man claimed that the more complicated the law the more opportunity for scoundrels.

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.

Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on ... as long as the women and children are saved.

Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them.

A man who marries at my age isn't taking a wife, he's indenturing a nurse.

There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into-that's the way we're built and I assume that there's some reason for that.

Spacemen - men who work in space, pilots and jetmen and astrogators and such - are men who like a few million miles of elbow room.

The whole principle (censorship) is wrong; it's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak.

The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.

You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.

Fulfillment in life is loving a good woman and killing a bad man.

Money is truthful. If a man speaks of honor, make him pay cash.

Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind.