Hello and Welcome. This page is a collection of 23 quotes that I liked and saved while reading Stranger in a Strange Land book by Robert A. Heinlein. I hope you will like them too.
By the way, I am Deepak Kundu, an avid book reader, quotes collector and blogger.
Stranger in a Strange Land Quotes
- A government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back.
- 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.
- My dear, I used to think I was serving humanity … and I pleasured in the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it.
- There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to stop being sensible – a time to stand up and be counted – strike a blow for liberty – smite the wicked.
- Never trust any machinery more complicated than a knife and fork.
- 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.
- 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 fault 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?
- Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don’t argue with it – especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken.
- English is the largest of the human tongues, with several times the vocabulary of the second largest language – this alone made it inevitable that English would eventually become, as it did, the lingua franca of this planet, for it is thereby the richest and the most flexible – despite its barbaric accretions … or, I should say, because of its barbaric accretions. English swallows up anything that comes its way, makes English out of it. Nobody tried to stop this process, the way some languages are policed and have official limits . . . probably because there never has been, truly, such a thing as ‘the King’s English’ – for ‘the King’s English’ was French. English was in truth a bastard tongue and nobody cared how it grew . . . and it did! – enormously. Until no one could hope to be an educated man unless he did his best to embrace this monster.
- ‘Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed – to merge, to blend, to intermarry, to lose personal identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science – and it means as little to us as color means to a blind man.
- Wealth – great wealth – is a curse … unless you are devoted to the money-making game for its own sake. And even then it has serious drawbacks.
- The human mind’s ability to rationalize its own shortcomings into virtues is unlimited, and I am no exception.
- I learned years ago never to argue with a specialist; you can’t win. But I also learned that the history of progress is a long, long list of specialists who were dead wrong when they were most certain.
- A present ought not to be very expensive – unless you are trying to get a girl to marry you, or something. Especially ‘something.’ But a present should show that you thought about it and considered that person’s tastes. Something he would enjoy but probably would not buy for himself.
- Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise. Believe me, I know; I’m in the same grift myself.
- 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, protray 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.
- Sex should be a means of happiness. The worst thing about sex is that we use it to hurt each other. It ought never to hurt; it should bring happiness, or, at the very least, pleasure. There is no good reason why it should ever be anything less.
- The foulest sinner of all is the hypocrite who makes a racket of religion.
- Geniuses are notoriously indifferent to the sexual customs of the culture in which they find themselves, they make their own rules.
- You have to give an editor something to change, or he gets frustrated. After he pees in it himself, he likes the flavor much better, so he buys it.
- I do know that the slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time – and then shut up.
- Sir, I was saying that when one is of my age, one is necessarily in a hurry about some things. Each sunrise is a precious jewel … for it may never be followed by its sunset. The world may end at any moment.
- Goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.