"$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"A cat is only domestic so far as suits its own needs."
― Robert Anson Heinlein
"A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"A family reunion is an effective form of birth control."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"A friend in need is a pain in the ass."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"A horrible little boy came up to me and said, 'You know in your book The Martian Chronicles?' I said, 'Yes?' He said, 'You know where you talk about Deimos rising in the East?' I said, 'Yes?' He said 'No.' 'So I hit him'."
― Attributed to Ray Douglas Bradbury (born 1920)
"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 Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"A locked gun cabinet and a primaeval Macintosh desktop-publishing system, green with age, attested to the owner's previous forays into officially discouraged realms of behavior."
― from Neal Town Stephenson (born 1959) describing Dr. X's lab in Diamond Age
"A lottery is just a tax on people who are bad at math."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"A man called the 'Walkin Dude', or sometimes the 'Boogeyman'."
― The Stand Stephen Edwin King (born 1947)
"A motion to adjourn is always in order."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"A paradox can be paradoctored."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), All You Zombies
"A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), Time Enough for Love
"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic."
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008) Clark's Laws
"Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist ― a master ― and that is what Auguste Rodin was ― can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired ― but it does to them. Look at her! "
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"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 Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001) The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"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 Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), Starship Troopers (1959)
"But where are we on the probability axis thing?" said Arthur. "Will the Earth be there or not there? I spent so much time looking for it. All I found was planets that were a bit like it or not at all like it, though it was clearly the right place because of the continents. The worst version was called NowWhat where I got bitten by some wretched little animal. That's how they communicated, you know, by biting each other. Bloody painful. Then half the time, of course, the Earth isn't even there because it's been blown up by the bloody Vogons. How much sense am I making?' Ford didn't comment. He was listening to something. He passed the Guide over to Arthur and pointed at the screen. The active entry read "Earth. Mostly harmless."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001) , Mostly Harmless
"Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____ there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001) , The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Cancel me not ― for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain."
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone."
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to _ n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain!"
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"Customs, morals ― is there a difference? Woman, do you realize what you are doing? Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe ― and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes ― make him feel shame if he doesn't have it."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding..."
― William Ford Gibson (born 1948) Neuromancer
"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again too. Who decides?
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"Does history record any case in which the majority was right?"
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"Don't appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he's not at home and never was at home, and couldn't care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy ― live or die ― is strictly your business and the universe doesn't care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it-- 'Thou art God!' "
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"Even the AI hated [my book]?" "The AI *loved* it. That's when we knew for sure that *people* were going to hate it."
― Dan Simmons (born 1948), Hyperion
"Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what ____ does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way . . . "
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"Everything to excess. Moderation is for monks."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has ― or rather had ― a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001) , The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship. "Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report. "A barrier of water vapor! A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library! A civilized race could not have stooped so low! A civilized race would not have . . . It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes."
― Startide Rising, by Glen David Brin (born 1950)
"God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"'God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends.' This may not be true, but it sounds good ― and is no sillier than any other theology."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love (1973)
"Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows 95 from my hard drive."
― HAL's first words contest winner, judged by Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. And another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible results. Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in To Sail Beyond the Sunset
"He had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days ― since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other ― with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"He never got around to writing the poems, of course, which was a problem but an easily solved one. The manufacturers of correcting fluid simply packed him off for a week somewhere with a copy of a later edition of his book and stacks of dried habra leaves to copy them out onto, making the odd deliberate mistake and correction on the way. Many people now say that the poems are suddenly worthless. Others argue that they are exactly the same as they always were, so what's changed? The first people say that that isn't the point. They aren't quite certain what the point is, but they are quite sure that that isn't it. They set up the Campaign for Real Time to try to stop this sort of thing going on. Their case was considerably strengthened by the fact that a week after they had set themselves up, news broke that not only had the great Cathedral of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery, but that construction of the refinery had taken so long, and had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion production to start on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001) , The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion ― i.e., none to speak of."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"I believe it was Heinlein who pointed out that science fiction is about things for which there is some scientific evidence, such as ghosts; while fantasy is about things for which there is no scientific evidence, such as faster than light travel."
― Dan Goodman dsg@maroon.tc.umn.edu
"I mean it. A confidence man knows he's lying; that limits his scope. But a successful shaman believes what he says ― and belief is contagious; there is no limit to his scope. But I lacked the necessary confidence in my own infallibility; I could never become a prophet ... just a critic ― a sort of fourth-rate prophet with delusions of gender. "
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"I meant," said Iplsore bitterly, "what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it."CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE."
― Sir Terence David John Pratchett (born 1948), Sourcery
"I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die Had he but known such _ a-squared cos 2(phi)!"
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." he muttered to himself. "Right," said Ford, "I'm going to have a look." He glanced round at the others. "Is no one going to say, 'No you can't possibly, let me go instead'?" They all shook their heads."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001) writing for his characters. Ford Perfect and Arthur Dent in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"I suspect that our race's tragedy has been played endless times. It may be that an intelligent race has to expand right up to its disaster point to achieve what is needed to break out of its planet and reach for the stars. It may always -- or almost always -- be a photo finish, with the outcome uncertain to the last moment. Just as it is with us. It may take endless wars and unbearable population pressure to force-feed a technology to the point where it can cope with space. In the universe, space travel may be the birth pangs of an otherwise dying race. A test. Some races pass, some fail . . ."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jacob Solomon Time Enough for Love
"I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
"I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent."
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!"
― Ray Douglas Bradbury (born 1920), Mars and the Mind of Man, 1971
"I'll grant the random access to my heart, Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove And in our bound partition never part."
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."
― Isaac Asimov, Исаак Юдович Озимов (1920 to 1992)
"If one tenth of one percent of the population is capable of getting the news, then all you have to do is show them ― and in a matter of some generations all the stupid ones will die out and those with your discipline will inherit the Earth. Whenever that is ― a thousand years from now, or ten thousand ― will be plenty soon enough to worry about whether some new hurdle is necessary to make them jump higher. But don't go getting faint-hearted because only a handful have turned into angels overnight. Personally, I never expected any of them to manage it."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our symptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face."
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"In the beginning, I was made. I didn't ask to be made. No one consulted with me or considered my feelings in this matter. But if it brought some passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way through life's mournful jungle, then so be it."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001) writing for his character Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts
"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel. However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."
― Creatures of Light and Darkness, Roger Zelazny (1937 to 1995)
"Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them."
― Steve Eley
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
― (attributed to Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in Postscript to Revolt in 2100
"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
― Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born 1929)
"It means 'Ask the next question'. Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It's the symbol of everything humanity has ever created, and is the reason it has been created. This guy is sitting in a cave and he says, 'Why can't man fly?' Well, that's the question. The answer may not help him, but the question now has been asked. The next question is what? How? And so all through the ages, people have been trying to find out the answer to that question. We've found the answer, and we do fly. This is true of every accomplishment, whether it's technology or literature, poetry, political systems or anything else. That is it. Ask the next question. And the one after that."
― Theodore Sturgeon (1918 to 1985), in an interview explaining the small symbol he used when writing his signature
"Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy ― in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"'Justice' is a search for workable customs."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"Knock-Knock Who's there? Armageddon Armageddon who? Armageddon tired of all these knock-knock jokes!"
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) Farnham's Freehold
"Land Trout migrate to earth occasionally....
"Life is short, budget the luxuries first"
― Robert Anson Heinlein
"Look. In twentieth-century Old Earth, a fast food chain took dead cow meat, fried it in grease, added carcinogens, wrapped it in petroleum-based foam, and sold nine hundred billion units. Human beings. Go figure."
― Dan Simmons (born 1948) writing for his character Tyrena Wingreen-FeifHyperion.
"Martin Silenus made an expansive gesture. "I was baptized a Lutheran," he said. "A subset which no longer exists. I helped create Zen Gnosticism before any of your parents were born. I have been a Catholic, a revelationist, a neo-Marxist, an interface zealot, a Bound Shaker, a satanist, a bishop in the Church of Jake's Nada, and a dues-paying subscriber to the Assured Reincarnation Institute. Now, I am happy to say, I am a simple pagan." He smiled at everyone. "To a pagan," he concluded, "the Shrike is a most acceptable diety."
― from Dan Simmons (born 1948)' Hyperion
"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) Time Enough for Love (He may have gotten it elsewhere.)
"Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost."
― from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
"Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the Empire forged."
― The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001)
"Metaphysics attempts to discover the ultimate nature of reality, and in this sense, the innerspace of science fiction is metaphysical fiction."
― Kate Wilhelm, née Katie Gertrude Meredith, (born 1928)
"Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code ― family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than the failure to abide by the code."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"Never try and teach a pig to sing: it's a waste of time, and it annoys the pig."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) Time Enough for Love
"Never try to outstubborn a cat."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his characterLazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter ― for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had ― first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine . . ."
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"Now comes Mike and says: 'There is no need to covet my wife... love her! There's no limit to her love, we have everything to gain ― and nothing to lose but fear and guilt and hatred and jealousy.' The proposition is incredible. So far as I recall only pre-civilization Eskimos were this naive ― and they were so isolated that they were almost 'Men from Mars' themselves. But we gave them our 'virtues' and now they have chastity and adultery just like the rest of us."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"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 Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"Progress doesn't come from early risers — progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long interlude in Time Enough for Love (1973) also later published in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?"
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"Religion is a solace to many people and it is even conceivable that some religion, somewhere, really is Ultimate Truth. But in many cases, being religious is merely a form of conceit. The Bible Belt faith in which I was brought up encouraged me to think that I was better than the rest of the world; I was 'saved' and they were 'damned' ― we were in a state of grace and the rest of the world were 'heathens' and by 'heathen' they meant such people as our brother Mahmoud. It meant that an ignorant, stupid lout who seldom bathed and planted his corn by the phase of the Moon could claim to know the final answers of the Universe. That entitled him to look down his nose at everybody else. Our hymn book was loaded with such arrogance ― mindless, conceited, self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us and us alone, and what hell everybody else was going to catch come Judgment Day."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"Saemtenevia Prospect was two miles long, and it was a solid mass of things to buy, things for sale. Coats, dresses, gowns, robes, trousers, breeches, shirts, umbrellas, clothes to wear while sleeping, while swimming, while playing games, while at an afternoon party, while at an evening theatre, while riding horses, gardening, receiving guests, boating, dining, hunting — all different, all in hundreds of different cuts, styles, colors, textures, materials. Perfumes, clocks, lamps, statues, cosmetics, candles, pictures, cameras, hassocks, jewels, carpets, toothpicks, calendars, a baby's teeth rattle of platinum with a handle of rock crystal, an electrical machine to sharpen pencils, a wristwatch with diamond numerals, figurines and souvenir and kickshaws and mementos and gewgaws and bric-a-brac, everything either useless to begin with or ornamented so as to disguise its use; acres of luxuries, acres of excrement. After one block, Shevek had felt utterly exhausted. He could not look any more. He wanted to hide his eyes. But to Shevek the strangest thing about the nightmare street was that none of the millions of things for sale were made there. They were only sold there. Where were the workmen, the miners, the weavers, the chemists, the carvers, the dyers, the designers, the machinists, where were the hands, the people who made? Out of sight, somewhere else. Behind walls. All the people in all the shops were either buyers or sellers. They had no relation to the things but that of possessions. How was he to know what a goods' production entailed? How could they expect him to decide if he wanted something? The whole experience was totally bewildering. Were his hosts in this strange world, the "shoppers" of A-lo, really capable of such daily acts of social irresponsibility?"
― Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born 1929)
"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!"
― Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922 to 2007)
"Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called "other", which is simply another universe, another planet, another species. "
― Theodore Sturgeon (1918 to 1985), in an interview
"Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide."
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"Sham Harga's coffee was like molten lead, but it had this in its favour: when you'd drunk it, there was this overwhelming feeling of relief that you'd got to the bottom of the cup."
― Sir Terence David John Pratchett (born 1948): Men at arms
"Sit back down ― and for God's sake quit trying to be as nasty as I am; you don't have my years of practice. Now let me get something straight: you are not in my debt. You can't be. Impossible ― because I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"TANSTAAFL (There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!)"
― Robert A Heinlein (1907 to 1988), The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966); the saying was not new, Heinlein created and popularized the use of the Acronym
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long Time Enough For Love
"That truth-is-stranger-than-fiction factor keeps getting jacked up on us on a fairly regular, maybe even exponential, basis. I think that's something peculiar to our time. I don't think our grandparents had to live with that."
― William Ford Gibson (born 1948) No Maps for These Territories
"The code says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.' The result? Reluctant chastity, bitterness, blows and sometimes murder, broken homes and twisted children ― and furtive little passes degrading to woman and man. Is this Commandment ever obeyed? If a man swore on his own Bible that he refrained from coveting his neighbor's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any man virile enough to sire a child has coveted many women, whether he acts or not. "The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none of my business, but ― is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"The future. Space travel, or cosmology. Alternate universes. Time travel. Robots. Marvelous inventions. Immortality. Catastrophes. Aliens. Superman. Other dimensions. Inner space, or the psyche. These are the ideas that are essential to science fiction. The phenomena change, the basic ideas do not. These ideas are the same philosophical concepts that have intrigued mankind throughout history."
― Kate Wilhelm, née Katie Gertrude Meredith, (born 1928)
"The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it ― once you can honestly say, I don't know, then it becomes possible to get at the truth."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet — or more frequently around a completely different planet. Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason. Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties. This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"The more you love, the more you can love and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988) in the Sayings of Lazarus Long
"The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of the Universes, wants the sacharrine adoration of his creations, that he can be persuaded by their prayers, and becomes petulant if he does not recieve this flattery. Yet this ridiculous notion, without one real shred of evidence to bolster it, has gone on to found one of the oldest, largest and least productive industries in history."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together."
― Stranger
"The only way to determine the limits of the possible is by going beyond them, into the impossible"
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)'s Second Law
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001), The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Ira Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset
"The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?"
― Isaac Asimov, Исаак Юдович Озимов (1920 to 1992), Our Future in the Cosmos – Space, a lecture given at the College of William and Mary,
"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. ― There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"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 Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"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."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"'This is Prostetnic Vogon Yeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,' the voice continued. 'As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.' The PA died away. Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth. The terror moved slowly through the gathered crowds as if they were iron filings on a sheet of board and a magnet was moving beneath them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but there was nowhere to flee to. Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said: 'There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now'."
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001), The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"This poor ersatz Martian is saying that sex is a way to be happy. Sex should be a means of happiness. Ben, the worst thing about sex is that we use it to hurt each other. It ought never to hurt; it should bring happiness, or at least pleasure."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy ― and dull fantasy at that ― as the real world is strange and wonderful."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts."
― Ray Douglas Bradbury (born 1920)
"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes."
― Gene Roddenberry
"We're living on the top of a pyramid,' he had said, 'supported by the massive base, rising above it, above everything that has made it possible. We're responsible for nothing, not the structure itself, not anything above us. We owe nothing to the pyramid, and are totally dependent on it. If the pyramid crumbles and returns to dust, there is nothing we can do to prevent it, or even to save ourselves. When the base goes, the top goes with it, no matter how elaborate the life is that developed there. The top will return to dust along with the base when the collapse comes. If a new structure is to rise, it must start at the ground, not on top of what has been built during the centuries past."
― Kate Wilhelm, née Katie Gertrude Meredith, (born 1928)
"We're not trying to bring people to God; that's a contradiction in terms, you can't even say it in Martian. We're not trying to save souls, because souls can't be lost. We're not trying to get people to have faith, because what we offer is not faith but truth ― truth they can check; we don't urge them to believe it. Truth for practical purposes, for here-and-now, truth as matter of fact as an ironing board and as useful as a loaf of bread . . . so practical that it can make war and hunger and violence and hate as unnecessary as . . . . as ― well, as clothes here in the Nest. But they have to learn Martian first. That's the only hitch ― finding people who are honest enough to believe what they see, and then are willing to do the hard work ― it is hard work ― of learning the language it can be taught in. A composer couldn't possibly write down a symphony in English . . . and this sort of symphony can't be stated in English any more than Beethoven's Fifth can be. "
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Michael Valentine Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land
"What are the facts? Again and again and again ― what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what 'the stars foretell,' avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable 'verdict of history'; ― what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), Time Enough for Love, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"When a distinguished, but elderly, scientist says that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
― Sri Lankabhimanya Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (1917 to 2008)
"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you may not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. 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."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"When the need arises ― and it does ― you must be able to shoot your own dog."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"When the ship lifts, all bills are paid. No regrets."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade . . ."
― Stanislaw Lem (1921 to 2006), Cyberiad
"Yield to Temptation . . . it may not pass your way again."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
"You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance."
― Ray Douglas Bradbury (born 1920)
"You live and learn. Or you don't live long."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988)
"You told me, 'God made the World.'" "No, no!" Harshaw said hastily. "I told you that, while all these many religions said many things, most of them said, 'God made the World.' I told you that I did not grok the fullness, but that 'God' was the word that was used." "Yes, Jubal," Mike agreed. "Word is 'God'" He added. "You grok." "No, I must admit I don't grok." "You grok," Smith repeated firmly. "I am explain. I did not have the word. You grok. Anne groks. I grok. The grass under my feet groks in happy beauty. But I needed the word. The word is God." Jubal shook his head to clear it. "Go ahead." Mike pointed triumphantly at Jubal. "Thou art God!" Jubal slapped a hand to his face. "Oh, Jesus H. ― What have I done? Look, Mike, take it easy! Simmer down! You didn't understand me. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry! Just forget what I've been saying and we'll start over again on another day. But ― " "Thou art God," Mike repeated serenely. "That which groks. Anne is God. I am God. The happy grass are God, Jill groks in beauty always. Jill is God. All shaping and making and creating together ― ." He croaked something in Martian and smiled."
― Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 to 1988), writing for his character Michael Valentine Smith talking to Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!" "Why, what did she tell you?" "I don't know, I didn't listen!"
― Douglas Noël Adams (1952 to 2001), The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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