Quotes From "Stranger In A Strange Land" By Robert A. Heinlein

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 A. Heinlein

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

Başkalarının işine burnunu sokmamak insanın sahip olabileceği bilgeliğin yüzde seksenidir... kalan yüzde yirmi de pek önemli değildir zaten. Robert A. Heinlein

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn .. . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Robert A. Heinlein

No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own .. . and that the trouble they are in is all their own doing .. . is one that they can't or won't entertain. Robert A. Heinlein

People simplify 'Apollonian' into 'mild', and 'calm', and 'cool'. But 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian' are two sides of one coin--a nun kneeling in her cell, holding perfectly still, can be in ecstacy more frenzied than any priestess of Pan Priapus celebrating the vernal equinox. Robert A. Heinlein

The country and culture commonly known as "America" had had a badly split personality all through its history. Its overt laws were almost always puritanical for a people whose covert behavior tended to be Rabelaisian; its major religions were all Apollonian in varying degrees---its religious revivals were often hysterical in a fashion almost Dionysian. Robert A. Heinlein

But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees. Robert A. Heinlein

He had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power. Robert A. Heinlein

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. Robert A. Heinlein

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. Robert A. Heinlein

Because the world has gone nutty and art always paints the spirit of its times Robert A. Heinlein

It is almost impossible to shake of one's earliest training. Duke, can you get it through your skull that had you been brought up by Martians, you would have the same attitude toward eating and being eaten as Mike has. Robert A. Heinlein

Daughters can spend ten percent more than a man can make in any usual occupation. That’s a law of nature, to be known henceforth as ‘Harshaw’s Law. Robert A. Heinlein

Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight. Robert A. Heinlein

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. Robert A. Heinlein

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 A. Heinlein

Customs, morals--is there a difference? Robert A. Heinlein

The drive for power is even less logical than the sex urge .. . and stronger. Robert A. Heinlein

Oh, you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay attention if it's free. Robert A. Heinlein

I'm always suspicious of disinterested interest. Robert A. Heinlein

Do you know your Bible?''Uh, not very well.'' It merits study, it contains very practical advice for most emergencies. Robert A. Heinlein

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. Robert A. Heinlein

…the greatest danger to man in space was man himself. Robert A. Heinlein

Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you. Robert A. Heinlein

Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is. Robert A. Heinlein

Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring. Robert A. Heinlein

Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling. Robert A. Heinlein

Support for the arts -- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Robert A. Heinlein

Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse---and without examining evidence which their “common sense” told them was impossible. Robert A. Heinlein

The Universe was a damned silly place at best . but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings "just happened" to be some atoms that "just happened" to get together in configurations which "just happened" to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations "just happened" to possess self-awareness and that two such "just happened" to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside. No, Jubal would not buy the "just happened" theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe--in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself. Robert A. Heinlein

But one way or another competing and weeding takes place .. . or a race goes downhill. Robert A. Heinlein

.. . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Robert A. Heinlein

In the twentieth century, nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America---and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it. Robert A. Heinlein

Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. Robert A. Heinlein