Robert A. Heinlein

But plenty of money (how well I knew it!) made hard things easy and impossible things merely difficult.

“You are trying to make a fool of Me, in front of My gentlemen.”

“No, Your Majesty, I cannot make a fool of You. Only You can do that.”

There were most questions, mostly silly, confirming an opinion I had kept to myself for years: Piety does not imply horse sense.

Behind every mystery lies another mystery. Infinite recession. But you don't need to know final answers — if there be such — and neither do I.

A miracle that takes place again and again and again is no longer a miracle; it’s just a nuisance.

I knew that flying machines were impossible; in engineering school I had studied Professor Simon Newcomb's well-known mathematical proof that the efforts of Professor Langley and others to build an aerodyne capable of carrying a man were doomed, useless, because scale theory proved that no such contraption large enough to carry a man could carry a heat-energy plant large enough to lift it off the ground—much less a passenger.

That was science's final word on a folly and it put a stop to wasting public monies on a will-o'-the-wisp. Research and development money went into airships, where it belonged, with enormous success.

However, in the past few days I had gained a new angle on the idea of "impossible". When a veritable flying machine showed up in our sky, I was not greatly surprised.

“Paranoia is the only rational approach to a conspiracy world.”

“But, Alec, the world ought not to be that way.”

“There is no ‘ought’ to it, my love. The essence of philosophy is to accept the universe as it is, rather than try to force it into some preconceived shape.”

The logical reconciliation of Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnibenevolence is the thorniest problem in theology, one causing even Jesuits to break their teeth.

I can’t see proof in the dreams of long-dead prophets; you can read anything into them.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

One does not persuade a butterfly to light on one’s hand by brandishing a sword.

Trust Jerry. If He is to help you, He must do things beyond your ken. Would you try to direct a brain surgeon? Or attempt to hurry one?