Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Robert A. Heinlein, fully Robert Anson Heinlein, pen name for Anson MacDonald

American Novelist, Hugo Award-winning Science Fiction Writer, called the "dean of science fiction writers"

"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."

"All in the world any woman has to do to be considered 'charming' by men is to listen while they talk."

"All men are created unequal."

"All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts: those who know this and those who do not."

"All revelations are personal, that's why all revelations are suspect."

"All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly, which can ? and must ? be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a ?perfect society? on any foundation other than ?Women and children first!? is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly ? and no doubt will keep on trying."

"All those religions--they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying."

"Allie, what do the Stars tell me to do? You know I don't understand the scientific part."

"Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."

"Always cut the cards... and smile when you lose."

"Always keep your clothes and your weapons where you can find them in the dark."

"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it."

"Always tell her she is beautiful, especially if she is not."

"Always yield to temptation, It may never pass your way again."

"An acquaintance is someone you know well enough to borrow money off but not well enough to lend it to."

"An apostate scientist, a kidnapped scientist, a dull peasant, a two-headed monster, an apple-brained moron -- five knives, counting Joe-Jim as one; five brains, counting Joe-Jim as two and Bobo as none -- five brains and five knives to overthrow an entire culture."

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."

"An Elephant; a Mouse built to government specifications."

"An honest politician is one that stays bought."

"An invention is something that was ?impossible? up to then?that?s why governments grant patents."

"And finally, I believe in my whole race?yellow, white, black, red, brown?in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability, and goodness of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth?that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth?but that we will always make it, survive, endure."

"And suddenly I knew I was people and could not stop laughing."

"Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself."

"Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homosapiens are the only animal that voluntarily does this to themselves."

"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."

"Another common error is to identify ?Apollonian? with ?good??merely because our most respectable sects are all rather Apollonian in ritual and precept. Mere local prejudice."

"Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure good government, it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare ? most people want to run things, but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the backseat driver syndrome."

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

"Any man who would take money two ways would take it three ways just as quickly."

"Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proven innocent."

"Any sort of ship you have to learn to pilot; it takes a long time, a new set of reflexes, a different and artificial way of thinking. Even riding a bicycle demands an acquired skill, very different from walking, whereas a spaceship - oh, brother! I won't live that long. Spaceships are for acrobats who are also mathematicians."

"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, protray 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."

"Anyone can see a forest fire. Skill lies in sniffing the first smoke."

"Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it."

"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house."

"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and -- thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms."

"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."

"Anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly."

"Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds."

"ANYTHING will burn with enough gasoline and dynamite."

"Anything worth doing is worth overdoing."

"Apparently Blank thinks I am a nice accommodating guy, please explain to him that I am a son of a bitch"

"Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation... whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time."

"As for logic and internal consistency, these mundane rules do not apply to sacred writings and never have."

"As it says in the Bible, God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery."

"As the caterpillar chooses the finest leaves to lay her eggs on so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys."

"As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is always unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it is always vanquished. Of all the so-called 'natural human rights' that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."

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

"At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different--in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness."

"At one time kings were annointed by Deity, so they problem was to see to it that Deity annointed the right candidate. In this age, the myth is 'the will of the people'... but the problem changes only superficially."