Robert A. Heinlein

Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn — when they do, which isn't often — on their own, the hard way.

But David, like all true geniuses, paid only pragmatic attention to rules made by other people — he obeyed the Eleventh Commandment and never got caught.

You live and learn. Or you don't live long.

Security people always spy on their bosses; they can’t help it, it’s a syndrome that goes with the job.

He enjoyed it, for every hour in school was an hour sitting down doing nothing harder than reading. Before and after school he had to do chores on his family’s farm, which he hated, as they were what was known as “honest work” — meaning hard, dirty, inefficient, and ill-paid — and also involved getting up early, which he hated even worse.

What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing.

Between being ‘right’ and being kind, I know which way I vote.

We may eliminate death someday but I doubt if we’ll ever eliminate taxes.

All men are created unequal.

Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out — many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels — correctly! — that it has been disenfranchised.

This air isn't free, you pay for every breath.

“Going to dance at my wake?”

“I don’t dance,” the lawyer answered, “but you tempt me to learn.”