Robert A. Heinlein on Wisdom
Browse 9 quotations attributed to Robert A. Heinlein, catalogued under wisdom, with dates where available.
This page displays 9 quotations attributed to Robert A. Heinlein and filed under "wisdom" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to Robert A. Heinlein, entry #109418: "Pop, who maintained that a wise man could not be insulted, since truth could not insult and untruth was not worthy of notice."
Attributed to Robert A. Heinlein, entry #177849: "Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too."
9 Quotes by Robert A. Heinlein on Wisdom
"Pop, who maintained that a wise man could not be insulted, since truth could not insult and untruth was not worthy of notice."
"Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too."
"Here is the wisdom of the ages: Men rule but women decide."
"It is very difficult to tuck a bugle call back into a bugle. Pandora’s Box is a one-way proposition. You can turn a pig into sausage, but not sausage into pig. Broken eggs stay broken."
"I had taken a partner once before—but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open."
"The matter was still "Top Secret" and the subject of cabinet debates at the time of the Scranton Riot. Don't ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough boys and girls to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I've read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don't know; it sounds Utopian."
"Poddy’s greatest weakness—the really soft place in her head, she’s not too stupid otherwise—is her almost total inability to grasp that some people are as bad as they are. Evil. Poddy never has understood evil. Naughtiness is about as far as her imagination reaches."
"Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is — so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group."
"I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces — with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything, now."