16 Robert A. Heinlein Quotes on Morality

Robert A. Heinlein quotes on morality

24. Age is not an accomplishment, and youth is not a sin.

28. Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.

29. Correct morality can only be derived from what man is - not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

32. Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with -- in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck. You, too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul -- and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code...so automatically your stomach did flip-flops...and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong. Faugh! I'd as lief use trial by ordeal.

43. A 'pacifist male' is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described 'pacifists' are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger.

44. A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.

66. Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.

80. Early rising may not be a vice : but it is certainly no virtue. The old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed.

124. Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense.

130. The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history. The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.

155. I now define 'moral behavior' as 'behavior that tends toward survival.' I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word 'moral' to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define 'behavior that tends toward extinction' as being 'moral' without stretching the word 'moral' all out of shape.

157. The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college - and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child: and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.

158. Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.

159. The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called 'patriotism.'

160. Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind.

171. How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.