Quotes from Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" (novel)

Robert Heinlein loves to provide lot of soundbytes - even in stories that are not so good. Here is my collection from "Stranger in a Strange Land" - generally in order in which they appear in the uncut version (1991) of the novel. Collection may not be complete - I marked them only when in mood! All need not be pearls of wisdom; they are the ones that held my attention when I first saw them.

1. "a government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive."
2. 'There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown children, can never be anything else.'
3. "the only true science is astrology.”
4. "men should rule the world and women should rule men."
5. "humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it."
6. "he, Jubal Harshaw, would have to make decisions and take action. Since he was philosophically convinced that all action was futile, the prospect irritated him."
7. "Human bipolarity was both the binding force and the driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists exaggerate on this point, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for creations of eunuchs."
8. "he took a dim view of males being reared by females."
9. "quit trying to be as nasty as I am; you don't have my years of practice."
10. "you are not in my debt. You can't be. Impossible - because I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it."
11. 'The importance of a public personage could be estimated by the number of layers of flappers cutting him off from ready congress with the plebeian mob. They were not called "flappers", but were known as executive assistants, private secretaries, secretaries to private secretaries, press secretaries, receptionists, appointment clerks, et cetera. In fact the titles could be anything or ... no title at all, but they could all be identified as "flappers" by function: each one held arbitrary and concatenative veto over any attempted communication from the outside world to the Great Man who was the nominal superior of the flapper.'
12. "long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings ... but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern."
13. "A desire not to butt into other people's business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom ... and the other twenty percent isn’t very important.”
14. "Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is about eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried. Democracy's worst faults is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents - a depressingly low level, but what else can you expect?"
15. "human mind's ability to rationalize its own shortcomings into virtues is unlimited".
16. "In the Tennessee legislature a bill was again introduced to make the ratio pi exactly equal to three".
17. "The way to do anything under the guise of religion that would otherwise be suppressed is to do it in the inner sanctum and keep the gentiles out."
18. "Public exhibition of lust I would find most distasteful, either as participant or spectator ... but I grok this reflects my early indoctrination, nothing more."
19. 'Most moral philosophies consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code - family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy that troubled you so, restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etc. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than failure to abide by the code.'
20. "sex is a way to be happy together."
21. “The code says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife' - and the result? Reluctant chastity, adultery, jealousy, bitter family fights, blows and sometimes murder, broken homes and twisted children ... and furtive, dirty little passes at country club dances and the like, degrading to both man and woman whether consummated or not. Is this injunction ever obeyed? The Commandment not to 'covet' I mean; I’m not referring to any physical act."
22. "Any male virile enough to sire a child is almost certainly so virile that he has coveted many, many women - whether he takes action in the matter or not."
23. "the slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time - and then shut up."
24. "you have to charge 'em, Jubal. The marks won't pay serious attention to anything that's free.” [Note: The word "marks" is used here as a euphemism for "crowds".]

Note: Moved here from original location on Aug 6, 2007. Reason.