Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was one of the most influential and controversial authors of "hard" science fiction. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility that few have equaled, but also helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first writer to break into mainstream general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling novel-length science fiction in the modern mass-market era. For many years Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the Big Three of science fiction.

The major themes of Heinlein's work were social: radical individualism, libertarianism, solipsism, religion, the relationship between physical and emotional love, and speculation about unorthodox family relationships. His iconoclastic approach to these themes has led to wildly divergent perceptions of his works. His 1959 novel Starship Troopers was excoriated by some as being fascist. His 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, on the other hand, put him in the unexpected role of pied piper to the sexual revolution and counterculture.

The English language has absorbed several words from his fiction, including "grok," meaning "to understand something so thoroughly that it becomes part of the observer." During his lifetime, beginning with his very first works in the later 1930s, he was also a major influence on many other writers, who tried to emulate, with varying degrees of success, the apparently effortless skill with which he blended speculative concepts and fast-paced storytelling.

Heinlein won four Hugo Awards for his novels following the year of publication. In addition, fifty years after publication, three of Heinlein's works were awarded "Retro Hugos" — awards given retrospectively for years in which no Hugos had been awarded. He also won the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for lifetime achievement.

• Have you noticed how much they look like orchids? Lovely!
• When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
• A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
• A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain — then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?
• A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
• An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.
• Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
• Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss.
• By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
• Don't ever become a pessimist... a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
• Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.
• Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
• For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization.
• I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
• I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
• I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent. A person, yes.
• I never learned from a man who agreed with me.
• It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
• It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.
• "Love" is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own... Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.
• May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live.
• Never insult anyone by accident.
• Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
• Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
• No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
• Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing — with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place.
• One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.
• One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.
• One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
• One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.
• Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
• Sex without love is merely healthy exercise.
• Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid).
• The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
• The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
• Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
• There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.
• To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy — and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.
• When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
• When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
• Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.
• You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

This vision revealed unto you by Mary, the Sacred Fem, at precisely 6:08 PM