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Robert Heinlein
(7 Jul 1907 - 8 May 1988)
American author who is one of the foremost of the science fiction novelists, noted for maintaining plausibility in his treatment of science in his stories.
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Science Quotes by Robert Heinlein (17 quotes)
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
In Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long (1987), 248.
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”—find out how he feels about astrology.
— Robert Heinlein
In Time Enough For Love (1973), 263. In Carl C. Gaither, Mathematically Speaking (1998), 249.
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
In Time Enough For Love (1973), 263. In Carl C. Gaither, Mathematically Speaking (1998), 347.
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
In Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long (1987), 247.
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
In Time Enough For Love (1973), 263. In Carl C. Gaither, Mathematically Speaking (1998), 349.
If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
— Robert Heinlein
Spoken by character Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love (1973). In Leon E. Stover, Heinlein (1987), 103.
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
Stranger in a Strange Land. Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 141
No storyteller has been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.
— Robert Heinlein
Time Enough For Love: the Lives of Lazarus Long (1973, 1987). The book has no page numbering.
One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
— Robert Heinlein
In Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long (1987), 250.
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
— Robert Heinlein
Time Enough For Love: the Lives of Lazarus Long (1973, 1974), 366.
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
— Robert Heinlein
In Time Enough For Love (1973), 263. In Carl C. Gaither, Mathematically Speaking (1998), 349.
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.
— Robert Heinlein
In Time Enough for Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long (1987), 247.
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
Methuselah's Children, revised (1958). In The Past Through Tomorrow: 'Future History' Stories (1967), 666.
This Universe never did make sense; I suspect that it was built on government contract.
— Robert Heinlein
The Number of the Beast (1980), 14. In Carl C. Gaither, Physically Speaking (1997), 340.
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
In Time Enough For Love (1973), 263. In Carl C. Gaither, Mathematically Speaking (1998), 348.
“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
Glory Road (1963)
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
