Works By Robert Heinlein

"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."

"Jill put a hand to her mouth and screamed. Smith's face had been completely blank. Now it became tragically forlorn as he realized that he must have chosen wrong action at the cusp. He looked imploringly at Jill and began to tremble. His eyes rolled up; he slipped slowly down to the grass, pulled himself tightly into a foetal ball and was motionless."

"Smith had relapsed into his attitude of passive waiting. Not understanding what it was all about, he had done only the minimum he had to do. But guns he had seen before, in the hands of men on Mars, and the expression on Jill's face at having one aimed at her he did not like. He grokked that this was one of the critical cusps in the growth of a being wherein contemplation must bring forth right action in order to permit further growth. He acted. The Old Ones taught him well. He stepped toward Berquist; the gun swung to cover him. Nevertheless he reached out — and Berquist was no longer there."

"Johnson should not have slapped her. He had not hit her hard, not even as hard as he used to hit his wife before she went home to her parents, and not nearly as hard as he had often hit prisoners who were reluctant to talk. Up to this time Smith had shown no expression at all and had said nothing; he had simply let himself be forced into the room with the passive, futile resistance of a puppy who does not want to be walked on a leash. But he had understood nothing of what was happening and had tried to do nothing at all. When he saw his water brother struck by this other, he twisted and ducked, got free — and reached in an odd fashion for Johnson. Johnson was not there any longer. He was not anywhere. The room did not contain him. Only blades of grass, straightening up where his big feet had been, showed that he had ever been there. Jill stared through the space he had occupied and felt that she might faint."

"Johnson did not hit Jill as hard as he used to hit his wife before she left him, not nearly as hard as he hit prisoners who were reluctant to talk. Until then Smith had shown no expression and had said nothing; he had simply let himself be forced along. He had understood none of it and had tried to do nothing at all. When he saw his water brother struck by this other, he twisted, got free — and reached toward Johnson — — and Johnson was gone. Only blades of grass, straightening up where his big feet had been, showed that he had ever been there. Jill stared at the spot and felt that she might faint."

"This brother wanted him to place his whole body in the water of life. No such honor had ever come to him; to the best of his knowledge and belief no one had ever before been offered such a holy privilege. Yet he had begun to understand that these others did have greater acquaintance with the stuff of life… a fact not yet grokked but which he had to accept."

"Jill suddenly had the feeling that Smith would unhesitatingly jump out the window if she told him to — in which belief she was correct; he would have jumped, enjoyed every scant second of the twenty-storey drop, and accepted without surprise or resentment the discorporation on impact. Nor would he have been unaware that such a fall would kill him; fear of death was an idea utterly beyond him. If a water brother selected for him such a strange discorporation, he would cherish it and try to grok."

"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. Jill Boardman encountered her personal challenge — and accepted it — at 3:47 that afternoon."

"Jill looked puzzled. "I don't know how to express it. Yes, I do! — Ben, have you ever seen an angel?" "You, cherub. Otherwise not." "Well, neither have I — but that is what he looked like. He had old, wise eyes in a completely placid face, a face of unearthly innocence." She shivered."

"There was so much to grok, so little to grok from."

"The abrupt change from rapport of water ritual to a situation in which a newly won water brother might possibly be considering withdrawal or discorporation would have thrown him into panic had he not been consciously suppressing such disturbance. But he decided that if it died now he must die at once also — he could not grok it in any other wise, not after the giving of water."

"Smith is not a man. He is an intelligent creature with the genes and ancestry of a man, but he is not a man. He's more a Martian than a man. Until we came along he had never laid eyes on a human being. He thinks like a Martian, he feels like a Martian. He's been brought up by a race which has nothing in common with us. Why, they don't even have sex. Smith has never laid eyes on a woman — still hasn't if my orders have been carried out. He's a man by ancestry, a Martian by environment."

"ONCE UPON A TIME when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith. Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one."

"Jubal... is a devout and fierce individualist in a world filled with cults and bureaucracies, and by novel’s end it is he, not Jill nor Mike, that is still a stranger, still tilting against the windmills. He honestly believes in his own free will, which Mike, Jill, and the Fosterites misinterpret as a pandeistic urge, ‘Thou art God!’ Mike, by contrast, readily abandons his Martian beliefs for human ones, even as he claims to merely find a congress between them."

"SISL was never censored by anyone in any fashion. The first draft was nearly twice as long as the published version. I cut it myself to bring it down to a commercial length. But I did not leave out anything of any importance; I simply trimmed all possible excess verbiage. Perhaps you have noticed that it reads 'fast' despite its length; that is why. … The original, longest version of SISL … is really not worth your trouble, as it is the same story throughout — simply not as well told. With it is the brushpenned version which shows exactly what was cut out — nothing worth reading, that is. I learned to write for pulp magazines, in which one was paid by the yard rather than by the package; it was not until I started writing for the Saturday Evening Post that I learned the virtue of brevity."

"A Cabellesque satire on religion and sex."

"Live each golden moment as if it were eternity — without fear, without hope, but with a sybaritic gusto."

"...You know how Fair Witnesses behave." "Well . . . no, I don't. I've never had any dealings with Fair Witnesses." "So? Perhaps you weren't aware of it. Anne!" Anne was seated on the springboard; she turned her head. Jubal called out, "That new house on the far hilltop - can you see what color they've painted it?" Anne looked in the direction in which Jubal was pointing and answered, "It's white on this side." She did not inquire why Jubal had asked, nor make any comment. Jubal went on to Jill in normal tones. "You see? Anne is so thoroughly indoctrinated that it doesn't even occur to her to infer that the other side is probably white too. All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't force her to commit herself as to the far side . . . unless she herself went around to the other side and looked - and even then she wouldn't assume that it stayed whatever color it might be after she left . . . because they might repaint it as soon as she turned her back. "Anne is a Fair Witness?" "Graduate, unlimited license, and admitted to testify before the High Court. ..."

"Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code — family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. 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 the failure to abide by the code."

"The golden sunshine of Italy congealed into tears. Here's to the alcoholic brotherhood... much more suited to the frail human soul, if any, than any other sort."

"The size of mammary glands is only a concern for infants. (and, I could add, for men or women who are temporarily or inappropriately thinking or acting like infants.)"

"God forgives necessity."

"There is no safety this side of the grave."

"Self awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together."

"He had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days — since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other — with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. (UC)"

"The essence of the discipline is, first, self-awareness, then, self control."

"Aquafraternally yours,"

"Secrecy begets tyranny."

"Waiting always fills."

"Nest. Water. Life."

"Grok in fullness."

"Share water. Never thirst."

"We grow ever closer."

"May you always drink deep."

"I give you the water of life."

"Our nest is yours."

"With water of life we grow closer."

"Thou art God. May you always drink deep May you never be thirsty."

"I mean it. A confidence man knows he's lying; that limits his scope. But a successful shaman believes what he says — and belief is contagious; there is no limit to his scope. But I lacked the necessary confidence in my own infallibility; I could never become a prophet ... just a critic — a sort of fourth-rate prophet with delusions of gender."

""Audacity, always audacity" — soundest principle of strategy. In practicing medicine I learned that when you are most at loss is the time when you must appear confident. In law I had learned that, when your case seems hopeless, you must impress the jury with your relaxed certainty."

"Kiss girls all you want to — it beats the hell out of card games."

"Who said I was wise? I'm a professional bad example. You can learn a lot by watching me. Or listening to me. Either one."

"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."

"I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time — and then shut up."

"Is there more than one Berquist?" "Maybe not; he is something of a bastard."

"Each sunrise is a precious jewel…for it may never be followed by its sunset."

"Man, as a social animal, can no more escape government than the individual can escape bondage to his bowels."

"If one tenth of one percent of the population is capable of getting the news, then all you have to do is show them — and in a matter of some generations all the stupid ones will die out and those with your discipline will inherit the Earth. Whenever that is — a thousand years from now, or ten thousand — will be plenty soon enough to worry about whether some new hurdle is necessary to make them jump higher. But don't go getting faint-hearted because only a handful have turned into angels overnight. Personally, I never expected any of them to manage it."

"My failures are so much more numerous than my successes that I am beginning to wonder if full grokking will show that I am on the wrong track entirely — that this race must be split up, hating each other, fighting each other, constantly unhappy and at war even with their own individual selves… simply to have that weeding out that every race must have."

"The ability to grok more of the universe than that piece you happen to be standing on at the moment. Mike has it from years of Martian discipline."