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Robert Heinlein
(7 Jul 1907 - 8 May 1988)
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Science Quotes by Robert Heinlein (57 quotes)
“Logic” proved that airplanes can’t fly and that H-bombs won’t work and that stones don’t fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.
— Robert Heinlein
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.
— Robert Heinlein
A “pacifist male” is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described “pacifists” are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger.
— Robert Heinlein
A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.
— Robert Heinlein
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.
— Robert Heinlein
A magician is a rule-of-thumb engineer. … And…a philosopher is a scientist with no thumbs.
— Robert Heinlein
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”—find out how he feels about astrology.
— Robert Heinlein
A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe.
— Robert Heinlein
Always listen to experts.They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.
— Robert Heinlein
Always store beer in a dark place.
— Robert Heinlein
Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.
— Robert Heinlein
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house
— Robert Heinlein
But does Man have any “right” to spread through the universe? Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics, you name it, is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what man is, not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be. The Universe will let us know—later—whether or not Man has any “right” to expand through it.
— Robert Heinlein
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.
— Robert Heinlein
Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet, you can’t win.
— Robert Heinlein
Cheops’ Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
— Robert Heinlein
Delusions are often functional. A mother’s opinions about her children’s beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
— Robert Heinlein
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.
— Robert Heinlein
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
— Robert Heinlein
Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.
— Robert Heinlein
From somewhere, back in my youth, heard Prof say, “Manuel, when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.” He had been teaching me something he himself did not understand very well—something in math—but had taught me something far more important, a basic principle.
— Robert Heinlein
Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
— Robert Heinlein
Had that wordy vacuum skull thought what this would do to every critical figure in science and engineering? … Throw away every book, table, instrument, and start over? I know that some of my ancestors did that in switching from old English units to MKS—but they did it to make things easier.
— Robert Heinlein
If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
— Robert Heinlein
It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another—but which one? Differences are crucial.
— Robert Heinlein
It is better to copulate than never.
— Robert Heinlein
It is said that God notes each sparrow that falls. And so He does … because the Sparrow is God. And when a cat stalks a sparrow both of them are God, carrying out God’s thoughts.
— Robert Heinlein
Magic … is a symbol for any process not understood.
— Robert Heinlein
Magic is not science, it is a collection of ways to do things — ways that work but often we don’t know why.
— Robert Heinlein
Men are more sentimental than women. It blurs their thinking.
— Robert Heinlein
Most “scientists” are bottle washers and button sorters.
— Robert Heinlein
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together.
— Robert Heinlein
Much like engineering. Design by theory, then beef it up anyhow.
— Robert Heinlein
No storyteller has been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.
— Robert Heinlein
Nursing does not diminish the beauty of a woman’s breasts; it enhances their charm by making them look lived in and happy.
— Robert Heinlein
Of all the strange “crimes” that humanity has legislated out of nothing, “blasphemy” is the most amazing—with “obscenity” and “indecent exposure” fighting it out for second and third place.
— Robert Heinlein
One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
— Robert Heinlein
Revolution is a science only a few are competent to practice. It depends on correct organization and, above all, on communications. … Correctly organized and properly timed it is a bloodless coup. Done clumsily … the result is civil war, mob violence, purges, terror.
— Robert Heinlein
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
— Robert Heinlein
The earth is simply too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
— Robert Heinlein
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
— Robert Heinlein
The phrase is self-contradictory; “sense” is never “common”.
— Robert Heinlein
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.
— Robert Heinlein
The universe is what it is and can’t be changed by jiggery-pokery. It works by exact rules, like a machine. … Natural law never takes a holiday. The invariability of natural law is the cornerstone of science.
— Robert Heinlein
There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature”—but beavers and their dams are.
— Robert Heinlein
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that’s philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that’s science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled by Murphy’s Law, sometimes offset by Brewster’s Factor; that’s engineering.
— Robert Heinlein
There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?
— Robert Heinlein
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.
— Robert Heinlein
This Universe never did make sense; I suspect that it was built on government contract.
— Robert Heinlein
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
— Robert Heinlein
Touch is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, or taste, and no human ever ceases to need it.
— Robert Heinlein
What happens when you place an insupportable strain on a mass, such that it cannot remain where it is? While leaving it nowhere to go? This is … the oldest proto-paradox, the one about the irresistible force and the immovable body. The mass implodes. It is squeezed out of its own world into some other.
— Robert Heinlein
When an apparent fact runs contrary to logic and common sense, it’s obvious that you have failed to interpret the fact correctly.
— Robert Heinlein
When faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand and then look at it again.
— Robert Heinlein
Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.
— Robert Heinlein
You live and learn. Or you don’t live long.
— Robert Heinlein
Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate—and quickly.
— Robert Heinlein