Cynthia Armistead Newman > Cynthia's Quotes

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Green Hills of Earth

“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 A. Heinlein

“There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.”
― Pierre Dos Utt, Tanstaafl: A Plan for a New Economic World Order

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“There is no such thing as "Just a cat.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“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.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Never try to outstubborn a cat.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

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

“Damnit! Nationalism should stop at the stratosphere!”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon

“Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
― Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“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 single clue. Get the facts!”
― Robert Heinlein

“Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”
― Robert Heinlein

“My old man says when it's time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Between Planets

“Do this. Don't do that. Stay back in line. Where's tax receipt? Fill out form. Let's see license. Submit six copies. Exit only. No left turn. No right turn. Queue up and pay fine. Take back and get stamped. Drop dead— but first get permit.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just
as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how
well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to
me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.”
― Robert Heinlein

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon

“If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Between Planets

“In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships and missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective, that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time - we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”
― Robert A. Heinlein